


Self-Made

by Karmic Acumen (Karmic_Acumen)



Category: Baldur's Gate, D&D - Fandom, Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Planescape: Torment
Genre: Adventure, Based On a D&D Game, D&D, Family, Fantasy, Friendship, Magic, Mystery, Spiritual
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2018-09-08 18:24:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 28
Words: 205,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8856079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karmic_Acumen/pseuds/Karmic%20Acumen
Summary: His life started in darkness and he never quite remembered how he welcomed the first light, which was probably for the best. He did remember absolutely everything that came after, though, which wasn't for the best at all.





	1. Prologue: The Seven Stages of Sociopathy

**Author's Note:**

> I actually have written part of the next chapter for Master of Wood, Water and Hill but, well... random inspiration.
> 
> Here's hoping this doesn't distract me from fulfilling the wishes of my readers as laid out in my FF.net profile poll.
> 
> Regardles, this is, obviously, a Baldur's Gate story, though it's more accurate to say it's a story set on Toril, with everything that implies. Meaning the Forgotten Realms lore as well as Spelljammer, insofar as I decide to include elements from the latter.
> 
> The Forgotten Realms lore writers messed up the timeline somewhat to the point where Gorion's Ward would be 9 or 10 years old at the start of the game (1368 DR) instead of the 20 stated in the game narration. So I've moved the Time of Troubles back a decade. Which should hardly be noticed.
> 
> As will become obvious quite fast, I'm exploring a character type totally different from my other protagonists, at least until he manages to live up to the story title, whenever the time comes for that...
> 
> And just to get it out of the way, Imoen won't be a romance option for Gorion's Ward.
> 
> Not that the protagonist is even capable of that sort of relationship as he is right now anyway, age notwithstanding.
> 
> Finally, the verses are adapted from "Atalanta in Calydon" by Algernon Charles Swinburne.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

**"-. .-"**

_Age: 0_

His first memory was of floating in warm, comforting blackness.

His second memory was of being unceremoniously pushed out of weightless/sleeping/tranquil and dropping into stretched/rough/dry as his eyes were bombarded with bright/haze/painful.

The window-shaking volume at which he expressed his displeasure didn't actually manage to secure a spot among his early recollections, which was probably for the best.

Being unaccustomed to light was similarly fortuitous, as it caused him to keep his eyes shut for a long time, rather than lay open eyes upon tired-stout-smiling or large-hairy-laughing. His first memories of _Mother_ and _Not-Father_ would have been far less innocent than the recall of warm, happy but bitter-sweet voices if he'd been able to look at them from the start. He always did see too much of transience and how to speed it up, once his sight got accustomed to not-first-home.

Not that it allowed his recollection of his birth to be a particularly happy one even then, considering that he'd just lived through the _murder_ of his safety and tranquillity.

Years later, he would be able to put a name to his emotion at the time and recognise it as _indignation_.

_Age: 1_

The woman was half-of-half and half-of-like-not-father. She was tall, thin, built in every way that seemed physically perfect, dressed in dusk and shawls and blood. She had both hands above his face, poised to sink daggers into both his eyes. _Death_ -touched blades, razor-sharp, black as the obsidian they were made of and jaggedly vicious enough that he could only see them as beautiful. She would stab down as soon as her chanting was finished, and her face would be even more radiant in exultation then, delighting in the most complex premeditated death that he had even discerned when witnessing someone about to kill someone else. A rare thing, given the care and shelter provided by Mother and Not-Father( _but call me father anyway, little one, whenever you figure out how to do anything but blubber, and I may just stop snickering at your attempts to intimidate me with that long stare of yours_ ).

Shelter. He hadn't had that since many cries, gasps, long silences and wails ago. The tall, dark ceiling of whatever place they were in now didn't count. Wails that came as much from the discomfort of the separation, rush and running as from being denied a clear view of _lash, lunge,_ _strike, stab, slay, flash, fire_ that he himself only ever managed to imagine, small, weak and sloppy like a snail as he was. But imagine and fantasize he did, each time he was faced with something that could _bring an end_ , like blades and cloth and drink and words.

Frequent were flashes that revealed the path to the _end_ of everything and anything, but as many as they were they were fleeting and quick. But sometimes they lasted long enough for him to notice the difference between what he could know and think during the flashes and what he could know and think outside the flashes. Or, rather, _didn't_ and _couldn't._

This was more than a flash, he supposed. It was long and intense, enough that he couldn't help but criticise the entire thing, as if his mind was clearer and faster the longer the murder went on. As far as ways to force a _death_ , it was slow, loud, wordy and overly complicated. He'd already come up with over a dozen different ways to finish the job, and twice as many to force the end on the woman herself. Knife width, length and weight: estimated. Woman's height, poise and distance: measured. Bare patches and weak seams in her garments: identified. Even her body bared every weak point to his sight, and the red beneath her skin guided his view to each and every surface vein, though he didn't have it in him to look at those. The big, fleshy thing behind her heaving chest pouches was more interesting.

It was dreadfully out of position and inefficient compared to how the woman looked on the outside. The pump would have worked better in the centre of her chest and if her air bags were symmetrically placed, even if both of the bottom thirds would have had to be a bit smaller. At least she'd have _both_ thirds instead of just one.

On the other hand, stabbing it would be harder, what with the middle chest bone being right on top of the flesh pump than-

Roaring thunder, fire, smoke and shouts from all corners. Death practically filled the dimness with loud, wonderful suddenness as wood, metal, fire and all sorts of _power_ cascaded into that place from the doors that had just been shattered in.

The next hundred heartbeats were of screams, shouts, outrage, self-righteousness, death, death and more death, both delivered and evaded by but half a handful of little and not so little bodies of flesh and same-as-him-but-not-really-as-much-overall. It was during the worst of it that Not-Father appeared, tall, robed and beardy as ever, but different, less and more than usual. Death surrounded and followed him, arresting infant eyes as he petrified and _shattered_ the woman that fancied herself good at killing babies, bairns and toddlers but really wasn't.

"Oh, thank Mystra," Not-Father's words barely strung together but his voice hadn't been slain yet. "You're alright, Cyrus. You're still alright."

The longest and most intense flash of self-awareness visited Cyrus then, and he couldn't help but stare and blink at Not-Father as his mind instantly filled with the knowledge of what the not-quite-close-to-death man had done in the days since Cyrus was pried from the dusty remains of his disintegrated mother.

The one-year-old looked at Gorion as if he'd seen him for the first time, but he didn't see him at all. For one instant, his mind saw only the swift, premeditated, decisive, completely thorough, utterly unforgiving and maximally _efficient_ method in which the man had galvanised his whatever-they-were into coming to help him track down and _murder_ each and every one of the people there.

The moment passed, Gorion and his cohort ran amidst shaky, noisy chaos, and Cyrus's mind begun to settle back into safe mindlessness, save for one emotion that remained and would return every time he laid eyes on his Father.

It could not be anything but _admiration._

_Age: 2_

"Home..."

Father made a strange, half-laughing, half-sobbing sound and hugged him closer, saying things to the others about words and firsts and how his son hadn't uttered a single thing for months since the kidnapping and how this was proof that a permanent change in residences was the best idea after all, to say nothing of the safety of Candlekeep's walls, but Cyrus didn't pay attention. Part of it was the strangeness of the place that was supposed to keep them now. Large, hard and grey. He wanted back to warm, cosy and honey-colored, even if Mother wasn't there anymore. But at the same time the hard, cold grey called to him like old-home never had.

It lasted barely an instant before that feeling was drowned out by instinct, mind-whirls and thoughts of how easy it would be for someone to die if they were not careful to stay away from ledges or not bash too hard head-first into the wall. Or be pushed.

For the first time, he wished that hadn't started back up again. The stone sense was an altogether more wholesome feeling, somehow. It felt… unpleasant to have it drowned out this way, and he wished it would return. Nothing new in terms of methods to push people and things into the next great adventure was being revealed to him anyway. He wanted that new sensation back, almost as much as Father wanted Mother back.

 _Longing_.

He didn't like it.

_Age: 4_

There was no blood on his hands. Or anywhere else on him really. That felt… wrong, somehow, what with the eldest and most disagreeable of Reevor's cats lying scattered all over the floor of the storehouse, its blood splattered and seeping into wood boards and walls. And several of the crates piled alongside them. Cyrus felt strangely deprived of the full experience of his first live kill, and it was doubly strange that the cut and bites on his wrist and hand from the cat's unwarranted attack had disappeared between one ripped limb and the next.

"-yrus! CYRUS!" A linen towel suddenly fell on top of his hands and different hands were shaking him by the shoulders. "Son, answer me this instant!"

The boy blinked up at his father, still taller than him by a fair margin despite having bent nearly half-way at the waist. "Yes?" He asked politely.

Gorion opened his mouth and closed it a couple of times, not saying anything. Then he looked around at the mess and proceeded to stare at Cyrus for a long while. The boy hoped he'd pass muster. Gorion had educated him to always do his best not to make a mess of himself, especially not so near his bedtime so he'd done his best not to. "Son, what _happened_ here?"

Cyrus blinked again. Didn't he already know? Gorion had brought him out of the main keep for a while, to get some sun and fresh afternoon air. Neither of them expected or planned for Cyrus to be commandeered by Reevor the storehouse keeper, but the dwarf loudly proclaimed that it was unseemly for a dwarf lad to be cooped up with dusty books all day and not even know he had kin in the same walls. Cyrus didn't care one way or the other where he spent his time as long as his father wasn't out of his sight for too long, and Reevor did seem to know new stories, and his gravelly, booming voice wasn't all that unpleasant once he got used to it. Things turned… unusual only when Reevor brought him to the storehouse on a trip to bring some whatever they were to the inn only to be faced with the sight of half a dozen rats scurrying about while the cats did precisely nothing.

Reevor had been incensed. After he ushered him towards the nearest of the useless cats he loudly commanded that Cyrus stand back and 'watch the deserters' and let him handle this, at which point the dwarf unfastened his handaxe and proceeded to engage the enemy with a truly inspired level of what could only be termed bombastic fervour. It had been interesting to watch actual life-and-death combat instead of hearing about it in bedtime fairy tales.

Cyrus related all this to his father while staring pensively at his beard. He hoped he'd have one at least as long when he was older. "It was oddly calming to watch, even if mister Reevor's technique wasn't suited to smaller enemies." The boy related. He'd gotten some good ideas to make the rat-clearing process swifter, involving less boisterous swings of the hatchet, among other things. He was sure he could improve the efficiency of the rat eradication process by at least 30%. "There was even a rhythm to the whole thing, or at least there was an attempt at it." He shrugged and looked up at his father. "I'm not sure why, but the way I was tapping in tune with that rhythm must have annoyed the cat on the same crate because it attacked me."

"Attacked!" Reevor burst from where he hovered near the door. A fair bit of gore covered him and his breaths were short. Had he run out to get Gorion? "That hadn' nae been an attack! She was playin'!" His eyes switched between him and the… cat all around him. Cyrus wondered if the blood all over Reevor was from the rats, the cat or both.

"Playing?" Cyrus frowned in confusion. "Cats use their claws and bites when they play?"

"Yes!" Reevor yelled in something like outraged disbelief. At least that's what Cyrus assumed it was, from comparing it to prior displays he'd observed on other people. And sensed, when he was close enough to them. "Moradin blast it, old man, what've ya been teachin'im if he doesn't even know that!? What are ya raisin'im on that he'd…"

The discussion devolved into something or other but Cyrus wasn't paying attention. He was distracted by something, or rather the lack of something. He stood still for a moment trying to figure out what it was, then his eyes snapped up to Gorion so fast that the old man started in place. Cyrus slowly blinked, then turned and pinned a long stare on the axe that the still ranting Reevor had re-strapped to his thigh. At this point his mind would be flitting all over the place with assessments, calculations and ideas for how to use the implement in order to enable the quickest, most efficient death possible on everyone and everything in the immediate vicinity.

Nothing.

For the first time since he'd first opened his eyes, Cyrus experienced nothing of the sort.

"Don' ya be getting' any ideas 'bout my Joy, brat!" Reevor suddenly yelled, turning to hide his axe from his direct sight. "This here's a man's weapon! Not fit for a lad who can't tell playing from fighting! 'Specially not one that reacts like… this!"

There were some more words exchanged but Cyrus didn't listen to them, and he paid just as little attention to the enforced trip back up to his room. He was more focused on trying to puzzle out what this sudden inner silence was. As if some ever-present drive had been satisfied for the first time. There was no sense of fulfilment, not really, but the _lack_ of desire to know how to inflict death all over…

"Cyrus. Son." The dwarf boy looked up from where he'd been sat on the side of his bed. Gorion was looking at him with an odd expression, possibly worry given the similarity to the look he'd had every once in a while between the lady-that-couldn't-kill-infants and arriving at new-home. "What are you thi-" The man cut himself off and treated the infant dwarf to an even longer, tense gaze. "What are you _feeling_ right now?"

He wondered if this was a question with only one correct answer. He didn't much care at that specific moment. Or any other moment really. He only had the truth to give. "Nothing." No desire to look for ways that everything in sight could be used to bring about _end_. No facts and instincts for how to swing and thrust and twist a blade just so. No points and lines that spelled out _death_ everywhere he looked.

There was just calm inside. And silence.

And just like that, he realised that "nothing" wasn't entirely accurate. There most definitely was _something_ there.

It was a heady, welcome feeling.

He thought it was called _peace_.

_Age: 4 plus 11 Months and 29 Days _

Sixty-three even steps of flat ground in a straight line save for the puddle at step forty-one and the larger one at fifty-five which were easy to step over and around, forty-five degree left turn followed by another thirty steps, then turn right for another eighteen then right a second time, two short stairs, shoulder-push the inn's self-shutting back door inward, walk forward across flat boards for another eight steps, turn right 40 degrees and go through the other door, descend twelve steps down to the basement, forward eight more steps then around the untapped wine barrels and he could finally set the case of twelve nectar bottles on top of the last one he'd carried in, then turn around and trace the path to the storehouse in reverse and repeat.

He actually longed for the days immediately following his decision to start going about… everything with his eyes closed as much as possible. At least then counting the steps was more than a habit he indulged in a vain attempt to distract himself. He could find his way blindly around most places these days as long as he didn't rush, and sometimes even then given the whispers and lines that now filled the darkness under his shut eyelids wherever there was an object or a wall. Even unfamiliar areas were navigable if he was careful, not that there were many of those left, and he could even detect new or moving objects like people that weren't a normal part of Candlekeep's layout. Visitors of all sorts and stripes. Especially people. All thanks to the uncanny awareness he had at all times of where their hearts were. Along with their main veins and arteries. And eyes, and joints, and tendons. Anything and everything that could allow him to put an end to them, especially the elements that would make it all neat and efficient if struck, cut or pierced _just so_. It wasn't even due to having improved hearing or anything like that, though his five senses had definitely sharpened as a result of the increased reliance on them. No, after a while of managing to keep his eyes closed and, therefore, himself unencumbered by the perception and drive to inflict _death_ , whatever it was about him that drove him to seek, acknowledge and bring about death seemingly decided that his attempt at finding some sort of peace from it just would not _do_. So one day he started to become aware of… death candidates even without looking at them.

He hadn't told Gorion yet. He hadn't explained his seemingly spontaneous decision to forgo sight either. He'd never brought up the promise of death he saw in everyone and everything for that matter. There never seemed to be a point to it. His father was busy enough anyway, what with the misgivings he had to deal from other people, not all of whom dismissed him as merely strange. Cyrus just wished his solution had worked for more than a month. Longed for the peace of those two weeks.

Longing. He liked the feeling less and less every time it came over him, but he was also grateful it existed, in those very rare moments when he felt anything at all. It was the whole reason he'd figured out that his drive to inflict _death_ could be directed, or at least partially satisfied even if his waking eyes never stopped showing him the path to its successful delivery upon all and sundry. It had come to him one night, while lying on the roof of the stables, staring at the sky – the only thing that didn't seem to have a death waiting for it, or at least none that he could inflict – when he was trying to make sense of his life and how little of it was actually _life._ He internally wished there was a way to inflict on his lack of peace the same thing that whatever-he-was seemed to be trying to persuade him to inflict on everyone and everything else. He wished there was a way to take a hold of that unwelcome constant in his life, the death seeking drive that coloured everything in his life and, at least for a while, _have it dead._

The solution had surged into his mind immediately upon forming that thought. That if his eyes were to blame for his inability to find peace in absence of _murder_ , then he shouldn't use them anymore. Over a dozen different ways to kill his eyes flashed through his mind, each with varying levels of effectiveness, efficiency and pain. He found it rather silly to get only notions so drastic, when there was a much easier way to go about the idea. That is to say, just keeping his eyes shut as much as possible.

At least whatever-he-was-inside certainly adapted quickly to enforced blindness, sharpening and coordinating his other senses until he could go about his life almost as easily and comfortably as before, lack of color notwithstanding.

Now he supposed he shouldn't have left the caveat of "at least for a while" in that wish. Maybe then his uneasy peace would have lasted more than two weeks after he got a hang of functional wilful blindness. It was a minor consolation that the dwarven awareness of Stone and Shape he'd only felt that one time when he first saw Candlekeep's walls managed to emerge from the fugue of his mind and stay with him since his first days of darkness. But even that consolation was offset by the reason why that was now a fact. That the Path to Certain Death had judged that very trait a proper tool in _murdering_ that peace of mind he'd diligently sought. It was that innate dwarven situational awareness that it perverted into his newfound ability to perceive death-dealing possibilities sightlessly. He supposed it was a blessing he didn't outright lose the innate sense instead of just… growing a death-seeking infection on it. And through it. And under it.

Reevor was waiting for him at the storehouse entrance, having brought out the last couple of cider crates. "Already back, are'ya?" He asked gruffly. "Still goin' 'round with yer eyes shut, I see." He handed him one of the cider crates while he picked up the last four, two stacked on top of each arm and led the way back to the inn cellar. "Really wonderin' what goes on in tha' head of yers sometimes, boy. But I s'pose 's'not my place to question it."

Unlike Winthrop the innkeeper who could never set aside his curiosity, comments and practical jokes, Reevor really meant that he said. His was a turbid existence, a way of life that didn't include many concerns beyond his storehouse, good ale and an otherwise easy day-to-day life. His views were hard to twist, emotions hard to bend, let alone crack or ground to powder. Mostly because he didn't care much about others' opinions or expectations of him, since there weren't many. His role was clearly defined and he revelled in the straightforwardness of managing the keep's food and drink stores and not having to worry about anything else besides, other than alleviating his boredom and indulging in a good ale every other hour.

Not that any of that made much difference to Cyrus, considering what he'd done to the man's composure the first time they spent time together. Reevor's initial ease of mind around Cyrus had been well and truly _killed_ that day, even though the older dwarf did his best to dismiss the event as evidence of a budding battlerager. His emotions only seemed clearer now, easier to pick apart with each passing day, especially since Cyrus started going around without seeing. They came to him in beams and arcs, eddies, currents and motes and flickers. Boisterousness and determined deliberation in regards to Cyrus himself, with an ever present underlying current of wariness/confusion/worry, both about and for him. The feelings bared themselves and their vulnerabilities, like everything else that could be used towards the purpose he had grown used to denying himself. Emotions were, after all, perfectly capable of inflicting death if guided and _struck_ in the proper way.

Capable of even driving a person to inflict death upon _themselves_.

Cyrus turned his mind away from that line of thought. Longing made itself felt once more as he wished he could claim to have done it due to some internal decision.

Sadly, that was not the case.

The reason for his distraction were the two men looking down at him from one of the only two balconies that Candlekeep boasted. The one just outside of the quarters belonging to the Keeper of the Tomes. The Keeper next to which Gorion stood. Cyrus allowed himself to actually use his eyes to look at them, though it wasn't his _eyes_ , exactly, that revealed most of what he perceived even then. His father was a seething mass of frustration, outrage and weary resignation that was nevertheless drowned out by protective fury on Cyrus' behalf. All of that masked by a veneer of respectful disagreement on the topic at hand. All of it perceived by the infant dwarf due to those emotions' intrinsic causal relation with the feelings and intentions of the other man, intentions of the type that never seemed capable of staying concealed or posing any mystery to Cyrus, even when he was the target. _Especially_ when he was the target.

As he averted and re-closed his eyes and followed Reevor, the boy wondered why his father would be in any way surprised, let alone so emotionally unprepared as to only barely keep his full reactions to himself.

So Ulraunt wanted him dead.

It was hardly something new.

_Age 5_

That very night, Cyrus got up at precisely midnight of 2 Myrtul, 1353 DR. He would have done it sooner but he knew his father often stayed up late to read or write by magelight. Especially when preparing for some event or other. Like the birth anniversary of his son which happened to be on that precise day.

Cyrus had counted out the seconds, minutes and hours since his father put him to bed that evening, just to be sure the coast would be clear. Not that he intended to skulk around the halls of the keep, but the man's room _was_ right next to his. Being aware of whether or not those nearby were asleep or otherwise disabled – a state that made _murder/death/kill_ so much easier to inflict, therefore a priority to his death-seeing sixth sense – also helped.

Once the last second of the countdown passed, he shucked off the blankets and soundlessly rolled off the bed, landing in a crouch that allowed him to reach under the bed for the gardening pick he'd snuck in earlier, when he made the standard trip to his room to change after doing the weeding in the vegetable patch. It wasn't a particularly sturdy implement but it would easily bear the weight of a small dwarf just turning five. Not as easily as it could be used to kill one, or anyone else, but close enough.

The window in his room wasn't particularly close to the floor but the desk Gorion tutored him at was conveniently placed right underneath it. It was easy to hop on. Cyrus didn't even need to use the chair, despite the desk being half again as tall as his very little, infant dwarven self. He _would_ have probably managed to jump the full two meters to the window, but that wouldn't have meshed with the little problem of the thing being locked.

Fortunately, the fastener was easy enough to undo, once he piled enough books under his feet to reach it. The window would have made that bothersome creak but he made sure to pull it open full-way in one, quick movement that mostly prevented that. From there, another hop and he was standing on the windowsill, looking down at the keep grounds.

Immediately his mind blossomed with the knowledge of how easy that position, that _height_ could be used to bring about his own death, down to the smallest, seemingly most insignificant detail. Everything from the distance to the lower level terrace to the coastal wind and distractions caused by the new view were considered and accounted for by his death-seeing eyes. His ever-discerning death perception was indiscriminate like that.

With practiced difficulty, he pushed that to the side and stared over both the inner wall and outer wall of Candlekeep at the Sea of Swords. That late at night the sea was nothing but a blanket of blackness speckled with glimmers of white, scattered reflections of Selûne's light. That thought made him shift his sight to stare up at the moon and the Tears of Selûne that trailed in its wake.

Having seen him spend so much time staring at the sky, both during the day and after sunset, Gorion seemed to have decided that his son liked the sky and its bodies – not technically untrue, though the cause and nature of the interest were misunderstood entirely – so had told him many stories of them. Stories which he insisted were all true, even if details were glossed over or scarce regarding certain parts. It was still hard, though, to reconcile the moon's role as Selûne's avatar with the alleged reality of the Tears being just floating rocks, castles and caves. Rocks, castles and caves that had been broken off of the main moon by a misaimed shot from a magic-fueled weapon created by dragonkind to destroy the King-Killer Star. An attempt which failed, apparently, meaning that all dragons in Faerun still lived under the looming spectre of inevitable madness that would descend on them due to the continent-wide Dracorage Mythal… whenever the King-Killer Star made its appearance in the Toril night sky again.

So much dread, destruction and indiscriminate killing tied to a measly, reddish comet.

Pulling his mind off that tangent, Cyrus grabbed a tight hold of the window frame and, with his pick in the other hand, leaned out to inspect the wall face for the best spot to carve a handhold.

Here he goes.

The first time he swung the pick, it glanced off the tough grey stone. The same happened the second time. And the third. And the fifth. At the tenth, Cyrus couldn't help but acknowledge the futility, but he _needed_ to get up there. He had to _kill_ the distance between his window and Ulraunt's balcony. _He needed the pick to be sharper._

Some unquantifiable feeling bloomed out of him through his fingers and over and through his smuggled tool the moment he made the eleventh swing.

The pick buried itself in the rock all the way to the hilt.

Cyrus blinked, pulled it out and gave the still normal-looking pick a long stare, then did the same to the wall. Then he very lightly struck the nearest potential handhold – the pick tip went in nearly a third of the way – and pulled.

A nice, deep groove was left in the wall. Cyrus ignored the stone chips and dust that fell into the night as he widened the etching with the other side of the pick, then paused to inspect his handiwork. It was almost perfect. Just wide enough to fit his toes, let alone hands – even with room to spare for future growth – and long enough to accommodate a full grip, yet not deep or dangerously enough placed to compromise the structural integrity of the wall rock. Not that one or two nicks would be able to actually do that to rocks as thick as he was tall, but it was the principle of the thing. Gorion brought them to live in Candlekeep because of the safety of the walls, Cyrus knew. Cyrus was fairly certain his father would be upset if anything compromised that. The boy himself never experienced that particular emotion, or most others for that matter, but he felt them in Gorion and everyone else often enough so he knew what they were and what they were for.

Besides being used in dealing out _death_ by _murdering_ that not-at-all-elusive thing called will to live, at any rate.

Climbing up to the level immediately above him was fairly easy after that. All he had to do was identify the spots most likely to fail him in whatever way (thus ensuring a fall that would surely end in death) and choose any spot _other_ than them to carve next. Easy.

There _was_ the matter of avoiding the lines that would cause the stone to fall apart – or at least the outer-most layers – if traced with any sharp objects, but it was only moderately harder, so still doable.

Nick by nick, he made a path and followed it all the way up to the crenellation on Candlekeep's top level. Then he had to climb some more and then do the same sideways, since said balcony was only several meters-wide and set in the middle of the wall, as opposed to Cyrus' room which was precisely in the corner.

Finally, nearly two hours since slipping out his window, he was there.

The grounds and panorama looked ever bigger from that vantage. Cyrus hadn't expected one floor level to make that much of a difference, but it was marked. He could actually see the farthest parts of the sea-jutting cliff face on which Candlekeep stood. He also had a better view of the watchers patrolling the walls, although the one on the left-most tower from him seemed to be dozing. Cyrus took some time to take in the effect that sleep had on not only the man's likelihood of suffering a sooner death due to being unwary, but the heightened effect his lapse had on the likelihood of _everyone else_ in the keep suffering the same. Even that mere, unrealised possibility had a clear, definite impact on the likelihood of _death_ , for him and everyone else.

Such a tiny thing…

Cyrus looked down at the grounds through the space between the balusters. Could such a small difference…?

With only a moment's consideration, he set the pick down and hopped to stand on top of the railing. It was thinner, much thinner than his foot soles, but he managed to balance easily enough. Once stood there, he stared down, going ramrod straight from foot to neck, utterly still and quiet. He got his answer and it was yes. Even that tiny difference in height markedly shifted the death paths, the available methods, even the effects of the death-enabling elements that existed independent from him. More height for dying faster on impact, stronger wind for dying more slowly, even a _failure_ at attempted death if a sudden gale pushed hard enough that one struck the wall and windowsill on the way down. It might even be enough for the eventual death to take a particularly drawn-out and painful nature if the freak occurrence broke the fall enough that one didn't immediately die upon hitting the lower terrace.

Hardly something that could have happened if the main keep was the same length and width at the top as it was at the bottom. Instead, the keep's walls grew closer and closer together every other level, providing floors three and five with open-air terraces for better defence in case of siege, especially versus airborne foes. The balconies on the sixth level were the only elements truly meant purely for the commodity of the keep's master and special guests.

Falling off the balcony. It could happen in so many different ways. Willing and not. It could end in even more ways. For a few minutes, whatever-he-was played out several versions of that precise string of events with Ulraunt as the actor.

How puzzling. He certainly hadn't come up with the thought to accomplish anything like _that_.

May as well go about why he _had_ come.

The young dwarf tipped his heels deeper back so that he'd fall back on the balcony and not to his death – if he fell at all – and shut his eyes. He thought of Gorion's storm of emotions earlier in the day. He thought of Ulraunt's constant wish that Cyrus be made _dead_ , even as there never seemed to be any wish to _murder/death/kill_ him himself. He wondered at what could have caused that desire to be stronger than usual that day, and why it rattled Gorion at all, let alone to the extent it did, or if it was something else. It was all one, big, confusing _mystery_. Big and unsettling enough, if only for his father, for Cyrus to take a deep breath and, for the first time in his life, take whatever-he-was by the horns.

 _I want this mystery to_ _**die** _ _._

_Right. This. Instant._

Suddenly he could see even without lifting his eyelids. The night peeled back as if sliding in reverse, a drawn-out process that somehow happened in a single flash, between one thought and the start of the next.

"It is still going at it, I see," Ulraunt drawled as Gorion emerged from the doorway to join him, as he'd commanded. "I do not know if I should be appalled at the way it so brazenly revels in its unnatural nature, or relieved that it is not intelligent enough to think of concealing it."

Gorion's look said much less than he felt. "I fail to see what you are speaking of."

The Keeper of the Tomes scoffed. "Always you insist on this wordplay when we both know what our words mean."

"Do we?" Gorion turned away from him to look instead at the grounds below. Cyrus's attention shifted to match and settled on the image of himself making his way to the storehouse where Reevor was waiting. "It seems more like we are rehashing old arguments that never result in anything. As we do every year on this particular date."

"Merely because I refuse to give up hope that you will finally see reason," Ulraunt said with forced neutrality.

Gorion said nothing. Cyrus stared at the tumult of feeling that shone from him to eyes that weren't eyes.

"You cannot claim ignorance this time, old friend!" Ulraunt growled when Gorion wouldn't speak. "Not after having glimpsed its true nature! And do not pretend not to know what I mean, or that you buy into the delusion that Reevor has decided to take shelter in!"

Cyrus wondered why Ulraunt could possibly assume Gorion didn't realize everything he said already. It's not like any of that had been a secret.

His father seemed to agree. "You need not worry that I am misinterpreting the situation. The child hardly attempted to lie about it or otherwise conceal anything." 'The child' because Ulraunt seemed to devolve into total revulsion whenever his actual name was mentioned. Gods forbid it be acknowledged that Cyrus was a person. Those were Gorion's feelings on the matter at least.

Cyrus didn't exactly blame Ulraunt for his observations though. He wondered about them himself often enough.

Ulraunt growled and glared at the small dwarfish figure trailing in Reevor's wake. "You do not put nearly as much stock in Alaundo's prophecies as you should, Gorion, despite what you claim. Each year it seems to be less and less."

"Or perhaps I put exactly as much stock as needed and choose not to overburden myself or anyone else with more."

"For Oghma's sake! Listen to yourself!" Cyrus was as confused by that outburst as Gorion was, though the latter definitely didn't show it. "What will it take to get you to see reason? Why oh why do you insist on hanging onto your irrational attachment to that spawn! Or do you feel that you deserve the punishment? For your failure to protect your wife perhaps? Not once but twice! Is that what this is to you, penance? To bear the presence of the spawn of the one that raped your wife and whose sycophants killed her soon after!?"

Gorion turned to Ulraunt with a glare so livid and incandescent that the other man winced and actually looked regretful at his outburst. Gorion's visage was the same Cyrus had seen long ago, when those two knives were hanging above him, just before Gorion confirmed for himself that his wife's son was still alive and unharmed. "I trust…" the old sage said slowly, "that I do not have to point out just how untenably you erred with that outburst, Ulraunt." Cyrus stared at the sight of Gorion's frigid tone utterly _murdering_ Ulraunt's self-righteousness with such finality that he did not need to look twice to know that their decades-old friendship, if it could really be called that anymore, had just been _killed_ as collateral just as totally. "Though I suppose it is good to see you following Cyrus' example and being straightforward and honest with me. It will save us both the trouble of ever having to speak to each other again."

Seemingly unable or unwilling to have that man in his sight for a moment longer, Gorion glared at Ulraunt and turned to leave, ignoring the way the other man reddened from both embarrassment and outrage at being so closely likened to the singular target of his loathing.

But the keeper of the tomes was proud and would not be left without the last word. "That child will be the death of you, mark my words!" He pointed at Cyrus just as he disappeared into the inn's backroom and Gorion into the library. "He is _unnatural!_ "

The vision dissipated, leaving Cyrus standing motionless on top of the still lethally-thin and balance-threatening railing amidst the whistling of unfaltering nightly sea breeze. The young dwarf didn't typically feel much of anything inside, but that vision did make him wonder why Ulraunt felt so very driven to throw Cyrus' unnaturalness in Gorion's face the way he did. Seemed to periodically do, if Gorion's initial remark was any indication. It wasn't like it was a secret that Cyrus was anything but normal. The only normal things about him were his stature and his hair color, honey brown like that of his mother as Gorion had fondly told him at one point, before the cat. And perhaps the fact that his inner organs were the same as every other dwarf's. Though that was strange to Cyrus himself, if not everyone else, considering how inefficient the setup was in several ways, as he'd noted for not-good-child-killer-woman, way back when.

Everything else was most assuredly not normal about him though. He was too steady, too quick, alternatively too focused and too scatter-minded, too quiet, too _strange_ , too creepy even, depending on who was talking about him. "For a dwarf lad" needn't necessarily be tacked on the end of the description, though it certainly wasn't ever out of place. Even having only just started actual tutoring, Cyrus had spent enough time around Gorion, Hull, Winthrop and Reevor to know that he was developing too quickly, both physically and mentally. Far too quickly for a dwarf and even somewhat quicker than was normal for humans, if that was possible. He remembered things after hearing or reading them only once, took in everything in his line of sight instead of noticing only bits and pieces, picked up skills and recognized the habits of others with ease.

The only exceptions were his dreams. He never remembered his dreams, or even having dreams.

Which was probably for the best.

In contrast to all that, Gorion seemed positively ordinary what with his only claim to unusualness being that he'd been married to a dwarf.

The way Cyrus could read whole pages at a glance drew him a fair few odd looks from the other readers in the library as well, which was part of the reason why Gorion ordered him to keep his reading, _all_ his reading, to when he was in private, at least until Tethoril managed to wring from him the agreement that he could act as a tutor as well. Soon followed by Parda. The two seemed fascinated by his memory and general ability to assimilate all sorts of information, especially regarding lore and culture. They also seemed to completely lack the contempt that Ulraunt felt for him. If they felt anything at all, it was delight.

Cyrus didn't reveal the reason for how his mind worked, since he'd never been asked. Young children weren't expected to actually know why and how they did most things, apparently. Which was strange in his opinion, though he supposed his answer to being asked would have been even stranger. How would he be able to explain that he assimilated information because it was necessary in order to gain the ability to kill with words? To strike and slay emotions in descending order of brightness until there was nothing left but bleak/dark/nothing –

Cyrus would have fallen off the railing if not for his unnatural ability to sense his own impending death. As it was, he gained a split-second forewarning so he wasn't startled into freefall when the spell of Sending sounded in his ears. "Cyrus! Where are you, child!?"

Gorion.

Distressed. Panicked.

At least insofar as Cyrus could tell from the voice, in absence of the nearby presence to shine true feelings right at him. "On the balcony."

Barely five minutes of quiet stargazing and Cyrus already could hear doors being flung open, running feet, Ulraunt's at once confused and outraged sleepy protests which Gorion ignored in his rush. Rush that came to a stumbling halt the moment the old sage barrelled through the balcony doors only to have his breath-shuddering relief at seeing Cyrus alive and in one piece devolve into mind-shattering terror at where and how he was standing on the banister. _Teetering_ forward as if getting ready to leap off.

In point of fact, Cyrus did almost lose his balance when that maelstrom of feeling and impressions breached the range of his awareness. He was, ironically enough, grounded only by the familiar contempt/disdain/loathing pouring forth from Ulraunt, even if there was a fair bit of shock and blaring alarm mixed with it now, none of it for him.

"Child…" Gorion wheezed, one part from the sprint and five parts from fear. For him. "What are you doing up there?" He took a breath and thought better of approaching more than he already had. " _How_ did you get up there?"

"I climbed out the window and scaled the walls," that was the answer to the question, right?

Silence.

" _Why?"_ Gorion asked, with enough voiced confusion to keep his distressed, alarmed worry out of his tone.

"I wanted to know why the Tome Keeper wanted me dead harder than usual earlier." Cyrus didn't imagine the sharp gasp that his father gave, or the spike of ill feeling just inside the door. "Or why you seemed to be so much more surprised and conflicted by it than normal."

"Where… Child, where did you hear about that?" Gorion asked in a sickly voice.

"I didn't," Cyrus shrugged, looking up from the ground and towards the sky. A cloud had come between him and the moon, but that was okay. Dwarves could see in the dark. And even so, there was still plenty of starlight and the sky was quiet.

He liked the quiet. Gave him something to focus on other than his inner _lack_ of quiet.

"How, then?" Gorion took another, cautious step forward. "Why do you think the tome keeper… that Ulraunt…"

"I always know when someone wants me dead." The Sea of Swords glimmered in spite of the lone cloud obstructing the moon. "Or anyone else dead, if they're close enough. Or if they've killed someone and how, or how they plan to kill someone or something, as long as they're within ten or so feet. More if the death is meant for me." A range that steadily grew as he did. There didn't seem to be any death for the sea though, just like the sky. At least none that he could inflict.

Not as he was at the moment.

"Always?" Gorion asked hoarsely. "What do you mean always? And anyone… And you… are you saying…"

Cyrus twisted his foot to spread his toes over the banister and turned around until he could lay his other foot back on it and re-secure himself. He only somewhat lost balance, but Gorion lunged forward with a cry anyway, though he didn't make it even half-way the rest of the distance. Ulraunt's balcony was fairly spacious. "Is it strange?" He asked his frozen father, whose face was covered in some raw emotion the boy wasn't sure he'd seen or even sensed in him before. "Someone's always wanted to kill me, since before I was even born. It's hardly something new or unusual." He gave his wide-eyed father an uncertain look, because this talk was starting to leave him confused as well. "I thought you knew…? You're the one who killed most of them."

"The one who…" Gorion repeated faintly. "Cyrus… what do you _remember_?"

The boy blinked. What kind of answer… "Everything?"

The white-haired man made a choked, sobbing noise and his eyes shone wetly even without the moon. "Child… what… what is your oldest memory?"

The boy wondered what that had to do with anything but answered anyway. "Darkness." He shrugged and wished he'd worn his shirt instead of just his pants. It was getting chilly. The sensation disappeared as soon as he thought about it. "Wet, warm, comforting darkness." He eyed the sky up above Candlekeep's bell tower. "It was quiet and peaceful then." For longer than even his two, precious, fleeting months. "Then I was hurled out and landed on something dry and coarse." He stretched his arms wide and cracked his neck. The clouds seemed to be moving on. "It wasn't pleasant." He lowered his eyes back down to meet his father's again. His father who was staring at him with confused dismay, horrified amazement, soul-crushing distress and everything in between. "I remember you were there though. And mother."

A strangled, grieved sound escaped the old man at that point and his arms were half-raised, reaching in either a plea or to ward off further truths. Or both. Cyrus frankly couldn't tell. "Then you also remember her… and her murder… the temple…"

"There was a woman who intended to kill me and a number of others." The boy shrugged. He seemed to be doing a lot of that. He looked at his father and the sickly glow of horror – on his behalf – that had dominated his self-light throughout that whole talk. "She wasn't very good at it." Cyrus couldn't help but feel he wanted that ugly shade utterly _dead and gone_ , and whatever-he-was pointed out just the tool to accomplish that. "You were better." The nameless color twisted and shuddered under the choking grip of some other emotion and the boy decided he wasn't trying hard enough. "You still are."

Gorion flinched in place as if he'd been stabbed and the horror in him died as promised to Cyrus by whatever-he-was-inside, leaving behind only a heavy, choking, suffocating, viscous-colored corpse known as misery.

The small dwarf stared, unfeeling, as the new growth gradually blotted out everything else until his father was nothing but a constricted, choking mass of something Cyrus would only months later identify as self-loathing. He stared for a long time, because his father could find no words to express himself for that long a time, because there was nothing that could be expressed in mere words.

How very effective his killing blow was, Cyrus thought morbidly. Exceeded only by the collateral damage inflicted upon everything else his father felt. He hadn't even intended it that way, he just wanted that ugly hue to die and fade away so that all the other colours could shine through more clearly. Could warm him more deeply, since the only times he actually felt anything was when others were close enough for him to feel something of what they felt. His determined, diligent, stubbornly hopeful father chief among them. He'd put a name to most every feeling except love, so he'd reached the conclusion that he just couldn't feel that at all, even as experienced by others, though he thought he might at least know what it looked like. Now it seemed there was something else he couldn't feel, no matter how clearly he saw it. "There's something wrong with me, isn't there father?"

Gorion choked on a sob and brought up a hand to cover his mouth, and while he couldn't look away from his step-son he also couldn't find it in himself to say anything. The churning, pus-like misery boiled, then drained into a deep, dark vacuum that seemed to suck in all light, and Cyrus knew he was witnessing the deepest depths of despair for the first time.

He wanted it dead and gone more than he'd ever wanted anything, but for the first time ever whatever-he-was didn't have any solution to offer. All Cyrus could do then was stare into that abyss and wonder if the abyss would stare back.

It didn't.

Cyrus wasn't sure why he felt like that only confirmed that something was wrong with him, but it did.

The boy dropped from the banister and walked towards his father until he was within arm's distance. The man barely acknowledged the fact that he was no longer in mortal peril. "You know what it is."

Gorion took a shuddering breath, then another and scraped together whatever composure he could from the shreds that hadn't been swallowed by the dark pit behind his eyes. "Yes."

The boy allowed himself a moment to wonder whether or not he should demand to know but realized he didn't care one way or the other. "Will it get worse if I know?"

Gorion's hand dropped and his barely restrained breakdown made way for the beginnings of a soul-deep pain so cutting that even the despair inside him started to crack, not that the jagged colours looked any better. "I do not know, son. I don't know."

The young dwarf just nodded. "Do _you_ think I should know?" He paused, seeing the pain of uncertainty tighten around his father's eyes as everything else threatened to pour out. "Do you _want_ me to know?"

His father shook his head. "No… no, I do not."

Cyrus nodded again. What else was there to do? "There are people outside Candlekeep who want me dead." Gorion flinched again and his face crumpled further than it already was. Cyrus didn't think it was possible. "Far away. Too far away for me to tell distance, direction or anything else." He switched his eyes to look at Ulraunt, who'd just exited his quarters in his night robe and was staring at him in a way he hadn't before. "And at least one person from inside these walls wants the same." Nothing on the outside, but the Tome Keeper's emotions certainly were as bare to the boy's second sight as ever, though there seemed to be a lot less loathing and a lot more pensive disdain now, strangely.

But Cyrus didn't care about that or him any more than he cared about anything else, so he looked at his father again. "Would the world be better off with me dead?"

Gorion released a keening cry of anguish and sank to his knees, pulled his son into his arms and clung to him as his tears finally spilled out. "Stop… please, stop."

Even though he was wrapped in robes now and his face held against his father's chest, everything else kept its piercing, ethereal clarity. Emotions churning in synch with a trembling, aged heart. "So you're not sure of that either-"

"No!" Gorion held him tighter. "Stop… _stop_. Don't… d-don't say t-these things, you don't need to… there's not… you're a _boy. A little boy!_ Of four. You're _four._ You're just a boy, why would you ask these things!? You don't… you're not… you're not… you're _not…!_ "

Not what?

But Gorion didn't know what to really say, or even what he wanted to say. The little he managed to string together seemed to be as much to try and persuade Cyrus as it was to convince himself of whatever there wasn't to persuade himself of.

And Cyrus had actually just turned five but he had been told to stop speaking so he did. Kept silent for a long time as his weeping father held him. Clung to him while unaware and uncaring that the Tome Keeper watched the whole thing.

It was only much later, when Gorion's helpless grief and strength were both spent, that Ulraunt spoke up, startling the older man into twisting around and somehow also into silence at the same time.

"Before the beginning of strife  
There came to the making of man  
Time with a gift of tears,  
Grief with a glass that ran,  
Pleasure with pain for leaven,  
Summer with flowers that fell,  
Remembrance fallen from heaven,  
And Madness risen from hell,  
Strength without hands to smite,  
Love that endures for a breath;  
Night, the shadow of light,  
And Life, the shadow of death."

Gorion clung to Cyrus throughout, as though trying to keep him hidden and shielded from the words that Ulraunt uttered. Words that Gorion recognized, though Cyrus had never heard them spoken before, not even by the Candlekeep chanters during their occasional recitals. Not even the day-long ones.

It was just the latest in a long list of failures, and no one was keeping track whose failures they were anymore.

What an odd way for the two men to interpret it, Cyrus thought to himself as Gorion stiffly pulled away and wiped his face clean of tears as best he could, though he kept a firm, immovable grip on his hand even after he climbed to stand once again.

But Ulraunt was still talking.

"Against winds of the north and the south  
He stalked and prowled as unto strife;  
He breathed upon his mouth,  
He filled his body with life;  
Eyesight and speech he wrought  
For the veils of the soul therein,  
A time for labour and thought,  
A time to serve and to _sin_."

That was when the boy was arrested by the way the pit of despair that had devoured everything worthwhile Gorion had ever felt suddenly shuddered and tightened. It remained, as powerful and all-reaching as before, but a steely light known as _defiance_ shone all around it now, as the man at once cut off the other man. Retaliated with verse of his own.

"And the high gods took in hand  
Fire, and the falling of tears,  
And a measure of sliding sand  
From under the feet of the years,  
And froth and drift of the sea;  
And dust of the labouring earth;  
And bodies of things to be  
In the houses of death and of birth;  
And wrought with weeping and laughter,  
And fashioned with loathing and love,  
With life before and after  
And death beneath and above,  
For a day and a night and a morrow,  
That his strength might endure for a span  
With travail and heavy sorrow,  
_The holy spirit of man_."

Ulraunt opened his mouth but Gorion glared at him with… something coloured a brilliant, beautiful shade that Cyrus was unfamiliar with and had never seen in nature, but could feel regardless, even if just by proximity.

He thought it might be faith.

"They gave him _light_ in his ways,  
And _love_ , and a space for _delight_ ,  
And _beauty_ and _length of days_ ,  
And night, and sleep in the night."

The two wizened men glared at each other with equal contempt, even if Ulraunt's wasn't all aimed at his now lost and unrecoverable friend. Or not even _most_ of it, given what words he said next.

"His speech is a burning fire;  
With his lips he travaileth,  
In his heart is a blind desire,  
In his eyes foreknowledge of death;  
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;  
Sows, and he shall not reap,  
His life is a watch or a vision  
Between a sleep and a sleep."

The certainty that that would be the end of the two men's exchange fell like a blanket of chilling snow over the three occupants of the Candlekeep balcony. Or perhaps the shivers came about due to the frigid staredown that the two monks had engaged in and didn't seem to have any inclination of backing out of.

Cyrus supposed he should use that time to puzzle out what that poetry (chant?) meant and how it referred to him, beyond what he'd already gleaned, but he didn't care about it enough to bother, the same as he didn't care about much of anything.

As always, he only ran on curiosity and whatever parts of it meshed with whatever-he-was. "You're a strange one," he told the Keeper of Tomes at Candlekeep.

Silence.

"Well?" Ulraunt sneered. "Spit it out boy!"

Gorion's grip on his hand tightened but Cyrus continued regardless. "You want me dead." He said it as easily and levelly as he generally said everything else. Why Ulraunt reacted so violently on the inside, with a mix of incredulity, outrage, spite and bullheaded conviction, Cyrus had no idea. He was only stating facts. "But at the same time you don't want to _kill_ me."

Ulraunt still took it as a question or a challenge, as grownups seemed wont to. "Get back to me on that in a few years, if you somehow manage to live that long." He turned to leave. "Or, better, don't and learn the meaning of the word 'delegation' yourself, if that even has a place in your twisted worldview." He stopped in the entrance and looked back over his shoulder, first at Cyrus and then at Gorion. "You both can stay in Candlekeep for however long it takes. But mark my words, that child will be the death of you."

"He is already many things to me," Gorion said lowly, and that unnameable shade behind his words seemed to grow stronger, for a moment. "Death is not one of them."

That seemed to be the end of it, at least the part of… whatever that was that was consigned to the balcony.

After a while, Gorion led Cyrus back inside – the boy felt Ulraunt's burning gaze on his back all the way to the stairs – and back down to their floor.

The man tugged him back, though, when he made to break off and head for his own chambers. "You're…" Gorion took a deep breath and tried to speak less hoarsely. He didn't manage it. "You're sleeping with me tonight."

"Alright."

Something in Gorion's bereaved gaze only faltered further at his mechanical compliance, but the man didn't comment on it, nor did he say anything else by the time he'd prepared the bed and sat Cyrus on the edge of it.

Only then did he try to compose himself again, and when he failed he asked his son what he dreaded to ask anyway. "Son… what are you feeling right now?" There was something like _longing_ in his voice but different. A faint, smudged, fading shade of the different. Unlike any other of the many times when his father asked that same question, right after he did something he'd never done before.

Even smothered, beaten nearly to death as the flicker of feeling was, Cyrus still thought it might be that elusive thing called hope.

The boy wondered if he'd know the right thing to say if he could actually feel the same way his father felt. Since he didn't, he only had the truth to give, as usual. "Nothing." The faith managed to endure, somehow, but the defiance sputtered out, leaving the black pit of despair to engulf everything again. It was almost enough to make the boy consider lying in the future, but his father had explicitly told him not to lie to him, ever, so he didn't and wouldn't.

Even when the result was his father's knees giving out.

Even when the result was a weeping, despairing man that always strove to do his best only to find out that his best might not be enough.

The black void of hopelessness swallowed every shred of faith Gorion had left, and Cyrus realized with startling clarity that it wasn't Gorion's faith in him that disappeared, but his faith in himself.

Unconsciously, despite the bleak/dark/nothing he had inside, despite that the only thing he felt at that moment – far from any sort of _peace_ – was called _apathy,_ his hand reached out.

Gorion embraced him with a wretched, soul-crushing sound, pulled him close and held him tight.

Held him and wept for half the night.

Cyrus stayed up for just as long, listening and feeling as his father mourned for his son, mourned his wife, mourned his life and mourned the last hope that had just died, never speaking a word even once. He'd lost all ability or will to even try. The boy waited to see if he'd at any point manage to feel anything that wasn't apathy or bleak/dark/nothing.

He didn't.

Yes. No peace for him this time either, unlike the last occasion when he'd been asked what he felt and answered with nothing.

It was near dawn that Gorion was finally out of tears, but even so he clung to Cyrus just as fiercely. Desperately. "I… I-I don't know what to _do_ , son…" he whispered brokenly, more to himself than anyone else. "I don't know what to do for you."

It wasn't a question, but people were expected to speak up even when they weren't specifically asked something, weren't they? That was the impression he kept getting lately. "That's okay," he murmured in his father's night robe. He wondered if this latest truth would work out any better than the others. "I don't know what to do for me either."

It didn't.

Gorion first froze, unsure if his son really had just spoken, and when Cyrus continued the man started in place. A yellow flare of sharp fear burst out through the empty pit within, though it lasted but half a blink before the self-loathing emerged again, showing that it hadn't been left behind on the balcony after all. The man hadn't expected his son to still be awake. "Oh child…" he murmured tiredly.

But even still he didn't release his child. He held him while he got into bed, while he pulled the duvet over the both of them, and while he faintly murmured his last words before exhaustion claimed him. "I won't let him have you…" And Cyrus knew, without a shred of doubt, that it wasn't Ulraunt his father was talking about. " _I won't let him have you_."

Defiant steel and scarlet-coloured conviction breached and covered the surface of the black, then the man was asleep at last.

Yet of hope there was no more to be had.

_Age 5 (and a half, and best you not be forgetting it!)_

But months after, just when Father seemed on the verge of joining his son in being bleak/dark/nothing, hope returned.

It dropped into their lives from the back of a cart.

It barrelled into the quiet of the fortress library like an iridescent rainbow comet coloured the sound of merry laughter, a hurricane of light and chaos that didn't seek anyone out but swept all along its trail regardless. It made him watch and wait and watch some more as it jumped from Winthrop's supply wagon and barrelled onto and across the grounds, through monks and healers and guards and tutors. Hope was pink and silver sunlight that dodged guards wound up by sticky fingers. It was green-backlit wrinkled noses at Winthrop's long-suffering cajoling to 'sit still and learn your letters, young lady!' Hope ran, hid, jumped and ran some more each time the innkeeper tried to reel it in with chores after helping itself to things not of itself 'so it's time for some time out, ya little devil you!' Hope snuck from nook to nook through light and dark alike, it peered around corners whether or not it bothered to hide. It popped out from the most unlikely places, a shout in its throat and a grin on its lips even though it never managed to startle him or in any way sneak up on him even once.

Hope was bright and immaculate no matter that it came from squalor. It was vibrant and colourful despite not having mother or father. Hope talked and asked incessant questions all the time. It whirled and glimmered and hopped and dashed, never stopping and never tiring. And whether or not it achieved anything it set out to do, if it even bothered to try for anything at all, each following day the bright star rose and ran, laughed, peered, jumped and swept across the grounds all over again.

As he watched hope drift towards him from the bar across the main inn hall, Gorion's Ward felt that he could finally claim to know what his mother and father had _hoped_ for him when they gave him the name they did.

Cyrus Anwar.

Far-Sighted Mind Most Luminous.

He was nothing of that, save perhaps the blind ashes of a sight never clear.

Hope was everything else.

"You stare." Hope was blunt, but her light reached him then and bathed him all throughout, and for the first time in his life he felt like he could understand and feel irony.

"Do I?" He shouldn't have cared one way or the other, but the bleak/dark/nothing was a different kind of nothing when there was so much light to fill and blot it out.

"Of course what you're doing's called staring!" Hope gasped in disbelief. "You live with your nose in books and you don't even know that?" The star she was inside didn't change in hue or texture at all when she spoke. It never did, whether or not she lied at all. "Well don't you be worrying none!" Hope proclaimed with a hand on her hip and a high-pointed finger, eyes seeing the sky despite the wood and second floor above. "This rudeness won't be lasting long, mark my words! For I've your measure now and I'm-"

"Magnificent."

Hope gaped and stared like he'd grown quite used to stare at her, but he was only speaking the truth as his father always expected him to do, whether or not he was there to see and gaze in bemused wonder like he was doing now from across the table.

But Hope was still there, speechlessly open-mouthed, so maybe he should be more clear. "You are _magnificent_."

The rainbow-like iridescence fluttered comically behind her silence, and Cyrus almost started at the notion of actually feeling something, let alone actual cheer.

Something besides morbid curiosity as to what the next step should be in the ever-evolving plan to bring an end to everything.

"Goodness!" Hope gasped dramatically, shifting to put her other hand on her hip and point with the other one. At him this time. "So you've heard of me after all!" She crowed triumphantly, heedless of the turned heads and looks of all sorts that her commotion was drawing from everywhere. "Yes, you've heard well! That's me alright! Imoen the Magnificent, and don't you forget it!"

Hope was life speckled with _sameness_ and memories of little bodies of flesh and same-as-him-but-not-really-as-much-overall. But where his _sameness_ was bleak/dark/nothing, hers may as well not have been there at all.

For all that they churned and rushed around and around the brilliant star she was inside, the specks and smokemist did nothing and _were_ nothing because there was no room for shadow in her spirit.

Cyrus watched and knew the meaning and feel of _fascination_.


	2. Overture: The Seven Stages of Empathic Mimicry

_Observation_

Other than helping Reevor with the lighter supplies from the storehouse to the Inn, Cyrus' didn't have many chores. He was determinedly kept away from anything even remotely tangential to animal-based food preparation. Ulraunt didn't want him to poison anyone, Father wanted him nowhere close the concept of killing things for consumption (or, really, for anything), not that they told him any of that. Ulraunt also wouldn't hear about him becoming a scribe or (eventually) an acolyte, likely because he wouldn't even contemplate the idea of Cyrus being nearby for the rest of his life. And working at the stables or chicken coops or other livestock proved similarly hopeless, since animals tended to become agitated or worse if he got too close. Reevor's cats had been the only exception, but even their lack of good sense was resolved after the fateful incident in the storehouse on that day, long ago. They kept well away from him now.

So all Cyrus had to do, besides running errands, was occasionally weed the gardens, vegetable patches and flowerbeds. The last ones Imoen usually helped with. Or, more often, helped hinder, since she tended to gripe constantly (when she wasn't going on random tangents about this or that piece of mischief she engineered) and smell the flowers more than care for them. She also wandered off or slipped away the first chance she got, claiming that she did more good to the world by going on adventures and having great and funny stories to share afterwards. She could only tell so many times the one about the barely failed pickpocket attempt on Winthrop in Beregost that somehow prompted the old innkeeper to take her in.

That her adventures were limited to little besides mixing up Phylida's and Dreppin's belongings (all variations of which she had done at least ten times before) did not make any difference, though to Imoen's credit she did occasionally manage to swipe one of Firebead Elvenhair's magic scrolls as well. That her attempts to learn the magic on them almost invariably ended in failure (save for occasions like that strange week when she walked around with all her colours inverted and became obsessed with the colour pink as a result) never deterred her. The same way her abysmally slow progress in learning her letters never seemed to deter her from escaping from Winthrop's enforced "time outs" either. This in spite of the man only trying to use them to teach her the worthwhile skills in life, and even more in spite of the fact that her continued semi-illiteracy was the reason for constantly failing to read Firebead's scrolls properly, which led to the biggest and strangest of the disasters in Candlekeep and, therefore, got her landed with those very "time outs."

As he carried a couple of ammunition stacks down into the basement of the Candlekeep warehouse, the not-as-small-as-he-should-be dwarf wondered why Winhtrop and everyone else seemed so bent on trying to impose any sort of structure on Imoen. Her free-spiritedness was precisely the reason she wasn't and never would be like him. Would never become dark/bleak/nothing.

That being dark/bleak/nothing was not… right.

It was probably nice to be able to feel happy. Cyrus only wished he could have more time to spend with Imoen. Maybe enough exposure to her self-light would even help him gain one of his own, or at least let him reflect hers for longer instead of staying bleak/dark/nothing.

Being bright on the inside was right. Bright like her. Like his name meant for him to be able to. He didn't feel much, but he did feel certain of that one thing, if nothing else.

_Affectation_

The main warehouse was big, but it didn't compare to the basement in neither length nor width. It was there that most of the long-term supplies of the fortress were stored, and the quartermaster of the keep had an office near the back on the left-most side as well. On normal days the place was packed around two thirds of the way with sacks, crates and chests of various goods, from potatoes, salt, spices and smoked meats to fabrics, paints, leather and even iron, in ore and ingots both. All neatly stashed by term and category.

Today was not a normal day. Not because the place was in any way fuller or emptier (which it wasn't), or because it was warmer or cooler than the earthy temperature just right for storing wine (which, again, it wasn't), but because it was populated with more than the quartermaster (who had a day off anyway). Specifically, Jondalar the combat trainer was there, as was Obe the illusionist. Obe, who was animating a number of illusionary monsters which a number of Candlekeep Watchers (those off duty, Cyrus counted) were practicing group combat against. The arrows and bolts were for them in fact. Cyrus got saddled with the task of bringing them over because he had to get Winthrop another crate of the cider that was so very popular with visiting nobles, and since there wasn't any left in Reevor's storehouse (and the Dwarf still hadn't come back from meeting up with visiting clansmen in Beregost, incidentally) Cyrus would have to go to the ultimate source anyway, so he may as well run that errand at the same time as well, there's a good lad.

Good lad. _Good_. What would Winthrop say if he knew better, Cyrus wondered?

The basement was not quiet. It was most definitely _un_ quiet, practically boiling with sounds of metal on metal, shouts, winding bowstrings, chants and spell lights. Cyrus paused at the foot of the stairs and stared at the chaos for a few moments. Chaos that Jondalar was trying and failing to yell some sense into while Obe was trying and failing to hide his snickers right next to him.

"No! NO, Fuller, when that happens you _thrust_. I said thrust! No, don't swing as if you're trying to fan the bad goblin's bad mood away! Oh for Oghma's sake, Davros, it's a hobgoblin sapper! You _don't_ turn your back on the assassin! No, not even to go after the mage! Why…? BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT HULL IS ALREADY DOING! So you don't have to pull stupid maneuvers like that and… leave your mage for the sapper to slaughter apparently… Well, you're still alive! But lo, _shockingly_ , your new friend isn't! So now you'll just have to hope the invisible _enemy_ mage doesn't burn you to a total crisp when it finishes its nice fire spell because you couldn't be bothered to keep your mage alive until it dispelled the concealment! (Gods, Obe, why do I even bother asking you to come conjure illusionary helpers for these idiots?) Oh for… Marl, Fire at the bloody kobold! Yes, the one with the nice little fire arrows, not at the bloody _skeleton!_ (Oh Torm, give me strength that I might manage _not_ to strangle him for trying to hit such a tough target that also happens to be literally made of holes _again_ ). And there's the burning hands…"

It seemed that everyone was busy. Also, Jondalar appeared to be a more complex man than Cyrus had previously thought, considering that the god he cursed by was different from the one he prayed to.

Wasn't there some sort of eternal punishment associated with that? Or did that no longer apply now that Myrkul wasn't around to torment the departed anymore? Cyrus was fairly certain that Cyric was by and large considered to be in no way better, and those who disagreed generally did so only because they were adamant he was, in fact, even worse.

Shrugging, Cyrus decided not to draw unnecessary attention to himself. That Jondalar chose that very moment to yell at Fuller for not paying enough attention only enforced that decision.

The boy quietly made his way around and behind the commotion. He couldn't stay right next to the wall since there were too many containers alongside, but there was plenty of room nevertheless. If Jondalar, Obe or someone else had the attention to spare, they would notice him soon enough anyway, seeing as how he was already entering their sight range, even if just from their far left side.

He was ten paces away from the sturdy (if old) table holding most of the spare practice equipment when his death flashed before his eyes.

Twice.

Well used to such things by now – Imoen never seemed to realise how close he came to dying every time she only barely failed to startle him off the roof, eaves or crenellation of this or that building – Cyrus abruptly stopped, leaned his head backwards and held the arrow cloth-wrapped stack of arrows up and to the right.

An illusory hobgoblin burst into smoke and the crossbow bolt that had killed it bore into a large crate with a loud thunk, shaft quivering inches from Cyrus' nose. Not that the young dwarf felt inclined to afford it much attention, or the gasps and cries of alarm from the other side of the room. No, his attention was on the arrow tip just a couple of centimetres from his ear, barely stopped by the bundle he'd brought in its path. The arrow had gone more than half-way through by the time it stopped its flight.

Frowning at the potential damage to the new ammunition this might have resulted in, Cyrus lowered the arrow bundle, dropped the bolts so he'd have a free left hand to pull the used one out of the crate – which took a couple of good tugs – then grabbed said bundle again and made for his intended destination. Once finally there, he set the bolts near the table edge and the arrow bundle in the middle to inspect the damage.

It turned out that the arrow had gone right through but not all the way to the back feather.

Well, one arrow feather would not be too much of a loss, especially since it could be redone. Cyrus grabbed the arrow from below the head and firmly pulled, using his other hand to press the feather closer to the shaft. With some careful handling the whole thing came out with minimal damage, and the lack of wood chips or splinters implied that the new arrows hadn't been harmed much either, if at all. Finally unfolding the bundle and spreading the arrows wider confirmed it, only three of them had been touched, with just one having actually broken.

Reasoning that he had exhibited the proper level of conscientiousness his father expected of him, Cyrus decided he was ready to acknowledge how quiet the entire area had become since his latest brush with that ever returning visitor called death.

He was met by eight stares ranging from incredulously relieved to gapingly disbelieving. Save for Jondalar who was looking at him with a stern not-quite-a-glare, though his self-light was a matter not so different from that of the others. "Lad, what were you thinking!?" The man snapped, then seemed to catch himself from yelling at him like he'd been yelling at his men up to that point. "You could have been seriously hurt just now."

This was another one of those increasingly frequent situations when he was expected to answer even though he hadn't been asked a question. "Yes," Cyrus answered politely.

That seemed to just intensify the stares and deepen the silence.

Then Obe sighed with what was probably exasperation. Cyrus wasn't perfectly sure of his ability to distinguish the nuance from impatience and annoyance, not on someone he didn't spend much time with, though he assumed the impatience was less likely than the annoyance here. He was fairly sure exasperation was the best bet though. "What _were_ you thinking just now then?"

"I was thinking I would finish delivering the ammunition so I could set about Winthrop's other errand I'm running."

Fuller snickered something about him always being at the beck and call of the "old bags" and how he's glad he outgrew that stage. This made Jondalar's self-light flicker with irritation at him for a few moments before it cleared.

"That's not what I meant, kid," the head trainer sighed. "I mean why did you place yourself in danger like that?"

"Like what?" Cyrus asked, honestly perplexed. "Was that danger grave? I'm usually in more danger of dying when I nap on the roof of the bunkhouse." Because of Imoen and her never-ending crusade to catch him by surprise which, ironically, became more and more futile the harder and better she got at trying due to the extra surprise factor only increasing his likelihood of death by fall-resulting-in-broken-neck and, thus, more obvious to him. But he wasn't about to say any of that. Everyone would assume the worst of her and while it was generally deserved (and blessedly ineffectual) most of the time, it really wasn't her fault in this.

Jondalar groaned and pinched his nosebridge. "Never mind. I am not qualified to deal with this." He looked at Cyrus again. "Now what errand was that?"

"I'm supposed to bring him a case of cider bottles, since the storehouse is out." The boy looked at where the cases of such usually rested. And where there currently weren't any. "Should I tell him there aren't any left?"

The conversation grew to include a few of the others and swung between the idea of sending him away empty-handed, telling him to come back later, telling him to send someone else later, and waiting for one or more of them to fill some fresh bottles from one of the untapped barrels. In the end, the last option was chosen after Hull mentioned that it would probably all fall to them anyway, now or later, since the quartermaster wasn't available and they were already there anyway so they may as well just double-down while Cyrus waited.

The dwarf drew on Gorion's thorough lessons in manners and politely thanked Hull for his consideration, and the 21-year-old ruffled his hair with a smile in response. Cyrus decided not to show the puzzlement on his face. He never quite understood the point of that act, but seeing Hull's self-light flicker brightly with good (fond?) humour implied there was definitely some point and use to it, even if Cyrus himself didn't feel it.

"Ha! Forget about it, you're not the only one who went through the runaround phase," Hull told him. "Sure, you and the hellion are the youngest kids by far to live in this fortress, but there isn't much difference in what you do compared to what the junior monks and Watchers have to do. Won't last forever though." He drew his sword and made a couple of loose swings. "Soon enough you'll be down here, swinging a blade with the rest of us, you'll see."

_Evocation_

"That's an idea!" Fuller suddenly exclaimed. The face Jondalar made, as if he was regretting not sending him as part of the group tasked with preparing the cider bottles, seemed to matter not at all to the teenager. "How'd you like to get a taste of it right now?"

The discussion devolved into a debate on the merits (Fuller and Davros) versus demerits of that idea (Jondalar for safety concerns, Marl because he didn't like Cyrus, something which the boy completely understood since he didn't like or dislike himself either) while Obe just glanced between each of them and Cyrus with an uncertain frown, not saying anything. Finally, and perhaps surprisingly, Fuller actually won the debate with his last argument, which even brought Hull to his side, though that wasn't the reason for his success.

"Oh come on! It's perfectly safe, Obe just has to spell the arms to be blunted and cushioned, as he _always_ has a couple of them prepared for the one-on-one practice sessions we haven't gotten around to today. Just let the kid choose something, spell both our weapons and Bob's your uncle! What's the worst that can happen?"

It was, perhaps paradoxically, that very last question that swayed Jondalar into agreeing. "There is doubtlessly a special place in Gorion's custom-devised hell waiting for me." The man sighed and rubbed his face, then killed Fuller's nascent glee in its cradle. "But given the way you so idiotically tempted Beshaba just now, I find myself morbidly interested in seeing how this whole thing explodes in your face."

"Hey!"

There was some amusement indulged in at Fuller's expense, so the young fighter-in-training pretended to ignore them and focused on Cyrus to their exclusion. "Well kid, go on, pick something up and let's see what you can do."

The boy tilted his head in confusion. "I thought training usually came before the actual-"

"Bah!" Fuller cut him off with an impatient wave. "No harm in having a quick spar at the beginning to see where you're at. Now pick up a weapon and let's go."

"I suppose…" Cyrus said hesitantly, then looked over the swords, maces, clubs, flails, staves, axes, daggers and other weapons piled next to and on the table. "What should I use?"

"Anything you like," Fuller shrugged. "It's not like it'll make a difference," The 15-year-old boasted. "Even if you put your all into it, it won't matter. Just putting it out there so you won't be too disappointed."

Cyrus looked away from the weapons and back to Fuller with a frown. "Are you sure?" That sounded like an assumption and Imoen had a very specific thing to say about assumptions and what they make out of her and him. Impersonally speaking, that is. "I'm stronger than I look." He cautioned. "Quicker too." Cyrus paused and considered the lack of subjects to compare himself against and amended. "At least I think so."

"Hah!" Fuller barked a laugh. "Would you look at that, boys! There's actually a cocky brat underneath all that polite and bland exterior." The young man moved into the freed up open space nearby and made a few practice swings. "Don't you worry about holding back none, kid! I guarantee that you won't be able to put a scratch on me!"

But Gorion had spoken to him very firmly about the importance of informed decisions and Fuller wasn't looking like he was making one right then. And Cyrus had watched enough of that battle earlier to identify at least three posture modifications that could improve Fuller's performance by at least 26%. "Are you sure I should do that?" Cyrus repeated dubiously. "I mean you're not very good."

And so it was that nothing was heard, for a moment.

But _only_ a moment.

Then Fuller balked in what was obviously shocked indignation, the others snickered, Hull bent over laughing, and a bottle fell and shattered to pieces somewhere at the back of the warehouse amidst sounds that could be nothing else but guffaws. Even Jondalar had a smile on, though the way he was rubbing his temples spoke of a dawning headache as well.

Looking upon the situation that had been caused by the simple act of speaking facts, Cyrus wondered what he should really be doing, if anything. He almost asked whatever-he-was to show him a path, then remembered the last time he'd done that – _viscous-coloured misery that turned abyssal and all-chilling_ – and stopped himself.

It wasn't even his first choice of tactics anymore.

Now what would Imoen say about all this, Cyrus wondered.

_Steal his boots!_

To which Gorion would say something like _that will hardly be an inconvenience indoors, child._ Or possibly not, since his reactions to Imoen were drastically different from those he had to Cyrus himself, even when he said the same things as she would.

_Sneak into the barracks at night and… well, do things to him!_

Not an idea applicable to the current situation but maybe worth further consideration at a later date.

_Pelt him with rotten eggs!_

Which was not contextually aligned at all, so no.

_Let's break his legs!_

Better, but that qualified as an excessive use of force, Cyrus was sure.

 _Oh… well, I got nothing_.

Which was _such_ a lie, Imoen always had something cooking in that brilliant mind of hers. If Cyrus was any better than not at all at feeling things he would have probably been baffled at her continued refusal to learn proper reading and writing by now. She'd master it in days if she tried. As many things as Imoen was, good at strategy she was not. If she were, she'd have long ago realized the benefits of maximising available time for fun and profit by the expedient of getting all the tedium out of the way as quickly as possible.

But the commotion at Fuller's expense finally started to die down, so Cyrus decided to try something he hadn't previously.

Bringing his many and very thorough observations of Imoen to the forefront of his mind, he mixed them with Gorion's stubbornly hopeful level-headedness until his mind's eye shone with the combined glow of their remembered self-lights.

Only then did he _will_.

_I want to kill Fuller's pretension in as painless but thorough manner as needed to compel him to spend the next few days thinking about and learning from the experience._

There. It even had a specific requirement for his continued living and haleness.

Points and items of interest bloomed and glowed in the dwarf's range of perception then, and he knew what to do to make that happen and how. "So… I can use any weapon I want." He made sure to look straight at Jondalar when he asked that, not Fuller or anyone else.

The man sighed and nodded. "May as well, yes."

"Alright." The dwarf pointed at the man's own scabbard. "I want your sword then."

The first exchange went to Fuller, as expected. Jondalar's longsword was a bit too big for Cyrus' still developing dwarven frame. It was also the first time the boy had ever held a weapon, which took away from his performance. Significantly.

The same story repeated itself on the second exchange. And the third. And the tenth. Those watching were encouraging him throughout, as apparently he was doing much better than any of them had expected. Or at least less dismally.

"A little higher and further – ah. Well you almost had it there!" Hull cheered from the side. "Just be careful not to try for upswings too perpendicular to the ground, you're too short to avoid clipping and glancing off the floor." Hull added after Jondalar nodded. "You'll probably want to switch to a short sword soon. It'll fit your frame better, I think, and you should be quick enough to make better use of it than a full longsword."

But Cyrus had accomplished the first stage of what he intended, namely to get a good feel for the weapon and let his mind settle from the influx of murder/death/kill information that rushed into his mind the moment he grabbed the hilt. Flickers of scenes had entered his awareness just from looking at it with an open mind, but that didn't compare to actually holding the thing, as he'd expected and intended. That was, after all, the whole reason he picked Jondalar's sword out of everything else.

Of all the weapons in that warehouse right then, it was the only one that had been used to kill. And not just by Jondalar either, but by his predecessor Dinodas as well. And both of them had carried and used it on trips to and from Beregost and Baldur's Gate on a number of occasions. Used it to kill things.

If Cyrus knew anything, it was _killing._

Fuller clipped him in the shoulder again and pulled back his next swing. "Ready to give up, squirt?"

"What a strange thing to ask," Cyrus said. "You're the one who insisted on this." He rolled his shoulder to dampen the rapidly diminishing ache. "I'm almost ready now, though."

"That's good!" Fuller said grandly. "Good to know your limits." Fuller misunderstood what Cyrus said he was ready for. He also pointedly ignored Davros questioning his ability to know his own limits, let alone anyone else's. "But I suppose I can find it in me to give you another shot, even if it won't do any good."

Cyrus didn't say anything. Instead, he held up the longsword vertically in front of his face and, once he had absolutely nothing in his mind but the blade, closed his eyes and _delved_.

The experiences rushed almost chaotically into the forefront at first, images of cut skin, sliced flesh, chopped limbs and arcs of blood painting the Coast and Lion Way air all around him. But he was beyond accustomed to this type of feedback by now, given how often he stood in the presence of his father and others who had a significant number of kills to their name, personally delivered or otherwise. Most noteworthy being the ones at the unknown temple of the woman who fancied herself good at killing infants but really wasn't.

Jondalar was definitely no incompetent though, and Dinodas had been his superior in all things, even though he'd died in an Ogre and half-ogre ambush just two years ago, his last act being to pass his sword on to his successor.

Cyrus delved into the original history of the sword all the way to the beginning when it was laid aside to cool after being taken off the anvil. The totality of the sword's experiences, the swords' _wielders_ experiences, gradually built up in his mind as he traced the life of the item all the way back to the present. And there was a fair bit of experience. Though he only saw the ones that resulted in a death, practically every maneuver had been used or at least vividly considered by the users to kill something or someone at least once since the sword was put to use. Jondalar's keepsake truly had lived a full life, even for an item of its exceptional quality.

The combined skill of the longsword's wielders settled in his mind just in time for Cyrus to note the line of _death_ rapidly sketching a wide arc in front and above him, aiming to knock the erect sword off kilter.

The young dwarf immediately swung his sword in the same direction – Fuller hit nothing and overbalanced – then swiped it back on an opposite arc underneath it, scraping the Watcher-in-training with the tip from one side of the abdomen all the way to the other.

The young man jumped away with a yelp amidst startled exclamations, giving Cyrus the few moments he needed to get his bearings.

Only he realized there wasn't much to it. Just twist the body to the side to offer a smaller target, turn on both feet part-way to allow for stable footwork and all that was left was to hold the sword out one-handed, tip-first and blade parallel to the ground. "Alright." He finally spoke, eyes staying closed to allow him a better view of the death lines all over Fuller's body, sword and the veins filled with lifeblood. It wouldn't do to hit or trace the length of one of those by mistake. "Now I'm ready."

Comments ranging from impressed to incredulous, Fuller trying to brush it all off as luck, hesitation in the face of being expected to attack a blind opponent, further hesitation at doing it to one so young and little, catcalls from the spectators, self-lights flickering, flashing, surging and waning in concert with each comment. Cyrus forced himself not to pay them much attention since he was liable to fall victim to a surprise shot like the one Fuller had just aimed at his chest. Rather hesitantly too.

Cyrus bent to the side, deflected the attack the same way Jondalar would have, closed in – Fuller's sword went aside and downwards enough to hit the floor with the tip – spun on around and sunk his elbow into an unprepared stomach. He allowed the young man to stagger away – his blade scraped off Cyrus guard with a familiar and at once unfamiliar shing – then spun on his feet to face him again. It was odd indeed, to find something he was better at while blind than seeing. Doubly strange was that it just happened to be fighting, as opposed to killing.

Fuller attacked again, not hesitant or generous this time at all, but Cyrus had his measure now, not because of the prior exchange but because Jondalar certainly had it and it was his and his trainer's skill the boy was using. It was really a shame that he didn't have time to do this for longer, but he really needed to get back to Winthrop with that cider.

Cyrus made as if to block the descending head chop but turned the block into a deflection again, sending Fuller's sword off-course along with the man himself. Then it was over in moments. Reverse the grip, leap in, keep your sword between his and your neck, hit the outside of his wrist with a knuckle fist to break his hold on his weapon, lash upwards with the sword to send his own flying vertically, then follow up with a slice at his face to make him bend back with a yelp, overbalance and fall on his backside, hitting his head and back against the wine barrel he'd ended up in front of. Then just spin on a heel and stab forward as fast as you can, hard enough to sink the sword tip three finger widths into the wood just an inch from Fuller's ear. Close enough to shear off hairs, blunted edge or no.

That only left Fuller's airborne sword, which Cyrus reached up for, grabbed by the hilt and drove tip-first into the floorboard right between Fuller's legs.

The short-lived exchange concluded with a flinch-inducing smash. Cyrus realized that his heart was beating faster than it ever had, almost as fast as Fuller's was, but that everything else had fallen silent.

His mind briefly stalled. Could it…

But no. Though outside it was all silence, inside wasn't. His whatever-he-was remained as active as ever, more so even for a few moments before it seemingly realized it had missed its chance at fulfilling its nature and settled back to the regular, manageable level, if the term could even be applied to a churning melting pot for all life and reason.

Cyrus stepped back from his erstwhile opponent and the firmly lodged weapons – the full measure of prior wielders' skill started to fade immediately from his mind as soon as he let go of Jondalar's longsword – and opened his eyes to look around.

He only got to see Fuller's stock-still, shocked face and the slack-jawed Watcher trainees holding the cider crates before Gorion's angry voice came from behind and commanded the full attention of anyone.

"What in the Abyss has been going on down here!?"

Fuller flinched, stared between Gorion and Cyrus, between Cyrus and the sword, Cyrus and the other sword, the sword and the sword, the sword and his nether regions, his nether region and the sword, the sword and Cyrus again, then he passed out.

_Introspection_

He was 7 and he knew triumph for the first time.

Triumph in a contest of arms, but the triumph did not lie in winning it so much as in _how_ he won it. Or perhaps what it didn't _devolve_ into. He was fairly certain what concepts of right and wrong Gorion adhered to by now, so Cyrus could attribute qualifiers like "good" and "bad" and "terrible" and "no, don't do this, son, _ever"_ to things, even if he himself didn't have it in him to form any emotional opinion on most matters.

That triumph also resulted in his first punishment but in retrospect it really wasn't much of one, much to Gorion and Winthrop's shared dismay.

Or, really, utter horror. Cyrus was familiar with that soul shade by now.

For his part Cyrus really wondered why they could ever think that being grounded along with Imoen would be any sort of hardship. Especially when he was only expected to sit down and practice his calligraphy, which he expected to be doing anyway for Dethek, or Dwarvish as it was called by most people. He supposed that this might have been a ploy to render Imoen more compliant to the idea of learning her own letters (finally) but the boy was fairly sure Gorion would have told him that straight out. As it was, the man had been fairly obviously and honestly incensed. And his reasons had not at all pleased the Watchers-in-training and their trainers.

"What were you thinking, son? (It was something new to try, father.) Whose idea was this? Fuller's? What possessed you to go along with anything he suggested!? (That had been aimed more at Jondalar than him). And the rest of you, I cannot believe that… (Here Gorion fairly fumed for half a minute). And you, son! I honestly expected more sense from you than any of these sense-forsaken simpletons! (Hey!) Especially simpletons who think full-contact weapons sparring is a viable pastime for seven-year-olds! (We had the weapons spelled for safety!) (I was only doing what Imoen would have suggested I do, Father). Well that makes everything alright then! It's not like bruising or broken bones or crushed eyes or smashed throats are anything to worry about!"

Cyrus was fairly certain that was called sarcasm and was determined to remember the self-shade it came flavoured in forevermore.

In all honesty, Cyrus enjoyed the Winthrop-supervised "time out" with Imoen more than he had enjoyed most things in life. Which, admittedly, wasn't much to go on with since the general amount of enjoyment he found in things usually levelled off at "none at all," but it was still something. On the other hand, two hours of being bathed in constant hope-glow did have the effect of making him think some unexpected (troubling?) thoughts too.

Thoughts he expressed to his father when he came to collect him that evening. "Father, can people spontaneously become stupid?"

Imoen giggled behind him but Gorion gave him a startled look. "Why would you ask that?"

Cyrus thought carefully about his answer because even he wasn't sure of it. "Until today I was… fairly sure that I was at least moderately intelligent." The incredulity behind Father's eyes was a rare sight, but the boy had something too heavy on his mind to pay heed to that too much. "But now I learn that getting to spend more time with Imoen was as simple a matter of following her example and getting myself grounded." Winthrop suddenly radiated dread behind him, and Gorion's self-light surged with the same, but the question demanded asking, so he looked up at his father and did just that. "Why didn't I think of that before?"

And that was when the horror overcame the hearts of all nearby.

_Imitation_

Months turned into years and Cyrus got better and better at understanding the way Imoen had chosen to live. At first he only joined her on her various capers, to varying (generally low) degrees of success. Still, the mayhem in Candlekeep effectively doubled within a month of the first time he started contributing. Gorion tried to get him to reconsider his newfound goal in life by refusing to ground him along with Imoen, but the latter became insufferable after the second time, and insufferably impossible to keep a hold of as Winthrop kept saying. She'd inevitably pop up to hang around wherever Cyrus was (even areas she wasn't allowed in or even supposed to be able to get in, somehow) so the two men had to fold and let them be grounded together in order to get anything done.

And Gorion always seemed reluctant to just outright order Cyrus to stop reaching out to the only other child his age in the Keep, so Cyrus decided to keep following her around and go along with all her ideas, only pointing out the ones that would result in actual damage to people, since anything too serious was liable to get him cut off from the hope-light to an extent he wasn't willing to allow. Then he started contributing to the ideas, then a year had passed and he'd gone even further until the two were engaged in an ever-evolving contest of one-upmanship in terms of how outrageous the next stunt would be, and whether or not it would score more points by being shouted from rooftops or kept secret. They usually pulled pranks off in sets of two like that, each a dare from the other.

Cyrus was unquestionably superior in execution and challenging Imoen to do prior stunts better and more efficiently, but he never came even remotely close to the imagination and audacity of her dares. Not that he tried, since that would demand the sort of emotional investment he was incapable of. He vastly outdid her in terms of diligence and attention span though, and after a year of being her partner in crime and only doing what he was suggested, he decided that perhaps it was time to take the initiative for once.

Which was why when Khelben Arunsun visited the Library Fortress during the month of Flamerule in the year 1357, Cyrus jumped him as soon as he undid his cloak clasp, stole the cloak and ran away.

He'd remember the chase for as long as he lived, not for how it underwent but more for what followed after the charge through, over and around people, puddles, mudpits and buildings.

He led the Watchers on a nearly literal stampede around the entirety of the Candlekeep grounds. Three times. It probably would have gone on for longer, seeing as Gorion was still frozen next to the famous guest and literally unsure of _what_ to think of his son acting out on his own that way, if not for what next happened.

The Blackstaff caught Cyrus by the scruff with a magehand and the boy almost killed Imoen in response.

He hadn't even seen her huddled and laughing to herself from behind the inner gatehouse corner tower. The whole point of the second part of the prank was to find her hiding place before he was caught by whoever reached him first. A tall order when she constantly changed hiding places.

So when Khelben Arunsun's magehand grabbed him, Cyrus's mind nearly blanked, threw out all awareness of how far he'd run, how fast his heart raced, how many people were after him, how many were ahead of him, how filthy the cloak had become along with the rest of him, all in favour of scrambling for something, anything that would allow him to keep looking for her. He didn't even register the _indignation_ that surged from somewhere deep, not immediately, or how it wasn't really indignation so much as a throwback to the only time in his life when he _had_ felt indignant, during the second of his earliest recollections.

No, he entirely forgot to check his thoughts, so for the first time in a long time what came to his mind was dangerously less than specific.

_I want the spell dead and off of me!_

The surroundings disappeared between one moment and the next, and he could see behind him without eyes a spectral hand made of weaved strands of bronze and moonlight. Strands that he only had to wrench apart – _it didn't matter which or how or when or what order_ – threads that he had to grab – _whatever-he-was_ _ **poured**_ _out and latched on_ _with grasping, slithering feelers_ – and _pull_ every which way with all his might.

His first mistake was assuming the strands he saw weren't tied to or sourced from others he _didn't_.

His second mistake was acting it all out.

The world exploded in a cacophony of colours and everything that could be heard in the world was heard within the walls of Candlekeep all at once.

Cyrus fell to the ground and stumbled in a daze, sight swinging to and from two different states like a half-bent pendulum that was showered with flares, blasts and currents of light on and on, regardless of state, regardless of what layer of reality it sensed. Cries, shouts and curses of everything from shock and alarm to pain and terror carried through and over the sourceless wind spout and dust devil, some piking or cutting off abruptly, few even degenerating into croaks and bleats and other sounds of beasts big and small. Light of all hues he'd ever seen blared all over the space around him, along with an equal number of shades previously unseen entirely. Then stone somewhere cracked, wood broke and splintered, solids of all sorts warped together and apart, and a flare of agony _cracked_ a star of light so distinctive and brilliant that Cyrus saw almost nothing at all, for a moment.

And it wasn't owed to the lights and flashed going off everywhere, but due to the sight of a causelessly crumbling construction scaffold that had been erected along the west wall in preparation of approaching Midsummer decorations. Because Candlekeep did have them, however understated. A scaffold that was now broken and falling in a heap after the nails holding it firmly together had all decided to burst out every which way. Half-a-foot-long nails, every which way. Three of which were responsible for Imoen shaking and gasping wetly from where she was spread across the grassy soil fifteen feet from where Cyrus had just staggered to stand.

The young dwarven boy found himself unable to do anything but stare at the two iron spikes sticking out of her stomach and the third one in her chest. He could only stare, open-mouthed, for a second.

A second during which he might have in any other situation been able to notice that he'd poured out, spread out enough of whatever-he-was to render himself totally, blissfully silent within. But he couldn't and didn't.

He likewise failed to register the moment when he felt, for the first time, something truly, entirely of himself.

Thus it came to pass that the first free emotion Cyrus felt on his own was _terror_.

It was perhaps the height of irony that he couldn't even then be said to have felt anything for himself.

But he was beyond the reach of such a thing as irony, or any other feeling or even capacity for reasoning, besides what was needed to stagger forward, _charge_ forward blindly – literally – heedless of the wild surges everywhere. He barely noticed the way his arm skin cracked under alternate heat/cold, or the blindness that descended on him – he'd never seen with just his eyes and he could go around blind anyway – and the way space warped and made him trip on a previously non-existent pit. Somewhere somewhen Gorion was shouting and calling for him and voices were chanting spell words or trying, but they didn't matter either. Not with Imoen's self-light sputtering and quickly sinking into itself, as if about to permanently wink out.

He didn't even care that he had no idea what he'd do even if he did reach her, but it almost ended up not mattering.

Five paces from her, wild magic blasted into and through him, then decided it was there to stay and latched on and together, forming into a net that instantly arrested all movement and forced him into total stillness. And because he was charging at his fastest, that meant he wound up falling face-first in an immobile, statue-like heap just half a meter away from her.

The way the terror inside him bowled and _shifted_ from a torrid yellow to a flame-red _fury_ might have had him amazed at finally being able to feel freely on any other day. But fury was _fury at being robbed of what was his_ , and in the moment when he looked at magic and saw what it was doing, saw it working to bring him only pain and ruin, he felt, for a fleeting instant, _hatred._

Hatred and the utter certainty that _he needed to know how to kill it._

For the second time that day, his mind fell inward and outward and all he could see was blackness weaved through with bundled strands of light. Frayed strands that were knotted, cross-streaked, straining and coursing with light, pouring power or choking it with a sort of chaotic unwellness that tore, quivered and flowed from one shape to the next like boiling quicksilver coloured everything and everything else. The young boy might have felt fascinated by it all on any other day, if he could feel anything at all, but not enough of the moment had yet passed to take away the _hatred_. He almost gave himself to whatever-he-was, nearly told it to grab and rip and _tear_ , but then remembered that this was exactly what he'd done before and it had only caused more of the same. _He needed to see further._

The bleak/dark/nothing rushed out of him almost entirely, and he might have thought of looking within to see if it was hiding anything but whatever-he-was managed to meld with whatever-he-wasn't and revealed every single strand running through every figment of air and space, the brilliantly vibrant and the shadow-woven alike. All-pervading and unquestionably alive, even if in a way different from everyone and everything else.

The Weave of Magic.

Mystra's and Shar's both.

_**DIE.** _

* * *

 

Hope was glass on verge of cracking, greyed-out, still and silent image of same-as-him-but-really-much-more-overall.

_(What in the Nine Hells just happened!?)_

_(Sorcery! Wild sorcery! Wild sorcery inside these hallowed walls!)_

_(He inflicted a zone of dead magic! Is there no end to that boy's unnaturalness!?)_

Hope was miracle unmoving, still alive in spite of how Cyrus had utterly _killed_ all odds of her salvation, even after he reached her, grasped her and _wrapped_ her nearly faded self-light in his bleak-dark-nothing that it might freeze solid entirely, that it might stop, stop, _stop_ , _STOP DYING BECAUSE I SAID SO!_

_(We have to move her! She needs magic and there's none to be reached!)_

_(We can't move her! She'll die if we do!)_

Hope was debt owed to a stranger who took the certainty of death by the throat and, with just a few short words spoken from just beyond the edge of the dead magic, broke that certainty utterly.

 _(_ _**I Wish That All of Mystra's Weave within a Hundred Meters of My Position Be Restored Right This Instant to How It Was One Hour Ago!** _ _)_

Hope was light silenced by stillness and the sleep of thrown-hurt-skewered that had barely been saved from the edge of the hereafter by the thing Cyrus had done his all to kill.

_(Cast your spells on her now, quickly! And see if anything can be done for the young man over there!)_

Cyrus willed the light to stay motionless, glass-like and _undiminishing_ until the priests managed to knit her body of flesh back together, all the while carefully not looking or thinking of the motionless shell of the youngest Watcher who'd been brought low by a nail through the eye just a few feet away.

_(How did he do that? He saved her life!)_

_(No, he only stopped her death.)_

Ulraunt was right, Cyrus had only gone and stopped her death, and he'd almost not had enough whatever-he-was for even that. For seizing that moment between life and not-life-anymore and deciding that it would last as long as it took to preserve the chance of getting her healed in time for it to make a difference.

Somehow.

_(Kid, kid, KID! You can let go now, the healers've got her, she'll be fine!)_

Only after did he falter and slant, almost collapsed if not for Hull catching and carrying him off.

Yet of hope for Davros there had been none to be had.

* * *

 

_Retrospection_

He'd been allowed to sit by Imoen's bedside only because everyone assumed he'd gone into shock. It might even have been true for anyone else, but the bleak/dark/nothing had returned to him and settled inside to what it usually was so he was back to not feeling much of anything, even after the short-lived, universally devastating moments of self-sprung ill feeling.

Gorion spent the evening next to him. And the night. And the morning. He never said anything, he just sat nearby, a mass of weary confusion, sadness and worry. And dread aimed at something, or caused by something or other.

Cyrus learned what it was after dawn, when Tethtoril showed up. Not that he hadn't already suspected.

"Gorion? He wants to see you." The First Reader said. "Both of you."

'He' being Khelben Arunsun.

Cyrus suspected he knew why they were being summoned. It was a feeling that had spiked the day prior just after the magical disaster and had yet to come down.

"Son?" Gorion called. "Are you alright to walk?" He asked uncertainly. "You haven't slept at all since yesterday night. If you're too tired I can just go alone."

"Gorion-"

The sage raised a hand to silence his nominal superior.

But Cyrus already knew that the feeling of _finality_ hanging above his head like a guillotine would only get worse if he stalled or chose to take Gorion on his offer to essentially take the worst of whatever he was being called for. "I'll come, Father."

Gorion smiled but it was a sad thing, at once fearful and determined for his son's future, and that quality didn't change after he took him by the hand or on the way to the room that had been granted to Khelben Arunsun during his stay.

The man was in bed, though propped up with his back straight against the pillows stacked against the headboard. He looked aged but not wizened, with grey-streaked but generally dark hair save for the pale patch running down the middle of his short beard. The Blackstaff was propped next to the headboard as well, within easy reach.

The man gazed evenly at Gorion and him as they were led in, looking not at all as weak and tired as the Wish spell had left him. If not for him being still abed Cyrus wouldn't have been able to tell he was in any way weakened.

Not that his attention stayed much on that tangent, considering everything else he could see in the man.

"Thank you for bringing them, Tethtoril," Ulraunt grunted. "You may go."

"I may but I will not," his tutor said calmly, walking to stand some distance to Cyrus' right. "As far as I can see the boy could use a neutral party to stand for him here." He gave Gorion an apologetic look but did not amend, then he gave Ulraunt a long stare. "Both of you are too emotionally close to the matter."

Cyrus wondered if this was what a trial was.

"Well?" Khelben demanded, dismissing the adults completely and treating the young dwarf to a cold gaze. "Step up, boy. Let me see the one who left me and another bedridden and a third ready to lie in the last bed they'll ever get."

Cyrus glanced up at his quietly outraged Father for permission and only did as told when he got it, however reluctant. The boy closed in several steps, stopping by the small table that blocked the rest of the direct path to the bed. There was almost nothing on the table, not even a cloth. Only a pair of scrolls, a stack of paper and a paper knife. One without any history of killing, unlike the man looking at him from ahead. He was strange. He was covered in lines of death but Cyrus knew instinctively he could not succeed in tracing them if he tried to, even with the man bedridden. Not without killing the enchantments protecting him, and perhaps undoing whatever spell was on him that was the reason for that one seam wrapping around him like a spiralling veil.

Cyrus wondered if it was a disguise of some sort, given that the grey-streaked hair and imposing manner was somewhat at odds with his age. The sheer amount of deaths the man had delivered or engineered traced back nearly a thousand years. He wondered if Gorion knew.

"The Keeper of Tomes has had some very interesting things to tell me about you, boy."

Gorion glared at Ulraunt for that, though he didn't seem surprised, and positioned himself on Cyrus' left and a little ahead of him, to cut in between the boy and the Candlekeep senior librarian.

Cyrus did not reply. He was still working through the sheer magnitude of the realization that this man's experience with murder dwarfed that of everyone else the boy had ever met combined.

"Tell me, boy, what it was that you did to the Weave yesterday." The man treated him to a piercing gaze that should have been a glare, given the way the man's self-shade cast shadows from within. "Provided you have any idea at all."

"I assume…" he started slowly, "that you have Gorion's permission to ask these questions." Because given historical evidence his Father would have probably wanted to seek insight into his son's mind first. And possibly without others finding out what he learned.

"You are all here, are you not?" Arunsun said sternly. "If he had misgivings, he would have voiced them."

"You can go ahead and answer his questions, son," Gorion spoke from beside him, then the glow behind his voice shifted focus to the Archmage with an echo of that scarlet-colored conviction of years before, after the balcony. "You have nothing to worry about." Scarlet and the shine of challenge.

Yet the guillotine loomed above him still, changing in likelihood and closeness not a whit. "I was surprised by the mage hand and reacted by _willing_ the spell dead and off me." He related everything factually, and the people around him reacted not at all (or nearly) on the outside but very much on the inside. "This enabled me to see the spell matrix and further allowed me to pull it apart at the seams." This time the reactions were much more pronounced. Tethtoril actually gasped. Slightly, but he did, and Khelben's eyes sharpened. Ulraunt was, as always, disdainful of him and every time he said anything. As for Gorion, he was just wearily resigned. "Being the first time I did this, or even seen the Weave itself, I did not anticipate this to pull on more of the Weave than was invested in the spell itself. This, I assume, caused the wild surge."

"That was no _mere_ wild surge, or even a single one!" Ulraunt snapped from behind and the side. "The whole world went mad because you did not want to be caught and disciplined for your brazen theft!"

Tethtoril intervened before Gorion could explode, though he only barely made it. "I do believe we are all well aware of how events yesterday unfolded. After all, we all were there." His enforced calm remained, but the rays revolving around his same-self seemed to radiate remonstration. "And I think we all are old, intelligent and _wise_ enough to tell the difference between a theft and an innocent prank, however tragic the outcome. _Aren't_ we."

Khelben interceded before that tangent could continue further. "You claim to be able to see the weave patterns making up spells." He did not sound anything but level-voiced, but there was incredulity there, behind his eyes, however faint. "I suppose next you will tell me that you next saw into the whole Weave and did something to it that left the area around you dead to all magical energy."

"Yes." Cyrus nodded, wondering why the grey/dark/clotted the man was inside jerked with startled surprise at his answer, even as he remained outwardly unimpressed.

The Archmage gazed at him without blinking for a long moment. "How? How did you do that?"

Cyrus blinked in surprise. If he didn't already deduce it meant Ulraunt probably hadn't told him about the lines, which meant that Father hadn't shared the details of his death-seeing eyes even though Cyrus had told him about them just weeks after Winthrop caught Imoen trying to pickpocket him in Beregost and brought her home with him. "The same way I imagine everything else can die." He shrugged. "I traced the death lines on them." He paused. "There didn't seem to be a difference in their case."

"Oh, will you cease your stalling! Explain!" Ulraunt nearly shouted.

Cyrus frowned at him over his shoulder but turned back to the Blackstaff. "I don't know what you expect me to say."

"He perceives the death of things as lines interposed over objects." Gorion said with a sigh. "He explained to me that he believes he could… break objects by tracing those lines with a sufficiently sharp or edged implement. I cannot speculate on how that concept was adapted for destroying the Weave, but I imagine the principle is the same, whatever it is." There was a strange subcontext of steel-colored defiance as Father spoke to the outwardly unchanged Blackstaff. "But this is all still supposition, since he has never done it."

"Until yesterday," Khelben stated, not asked. Stated at Cyrus, not his father.

"Yes," Cyrus confirmed.

Khelben stared. Gorion stared at Khelben while Ulraunt and Tethtoril stared at him, though that was the only thing common between the two.

"Show me." The Archmage told him, gesturing to the knife.

The boy picked up the knife, bent forward to reach for the far end of the table (he had to stand on the tips of his toes to reach far enough) and steadily traced the circuitous route that _death_ travelled along the surface. Whatever-he-was fairly gushed through and around the item in his grip, cutting through everything that mattered even as the knife didn't leave behind even the faintest scratch.

It was a sturdy thing, that table, made of walnut treated with lacquer.

The moment he finished and lifted the knife the table top crumbled to thumb-sized pieces, splinters and a fair bit of dust.

Cyrus stared. Everyone stared at Cyrus.

The four table legs fell on top of the scrap pile.

"Huh," the boy said when no one seemed inclined to say anything themselves. "I didn't expect it to outright crumble. At most I thought it would just… break in half."

The blade of the guillotine fell down on the non-existent shade of his hope for the future and Cyrus understood what it meant for one to know exactly when they would die.

Intellectually at least.

Khelben levelled an outright glare at Gorion, but the latter returned it just as fiercely. "Do not presume to try and intimidate me. I am not one of your impressionable apprentices so either speak your mind or look elsewhere."

"You did not feel this was a matter worth mentioning?" The Archmage was outright livid, even though it barely came through in his tone.

"How I choose to handle my personal and family matters is no concern of yours or anyone else's."

"This is not a mere personal or family matter!" Khelben Arunsun outright snapped from where he'd straightened even further.

"There is nothing _mere_ about personal and family matters," Father oozed outright _disdain_. "I would have expected Laeral, at least, to know that."

Khelben slammed the Blackstaff against the stone floor. Cyrus looked away from the knife he was holding in order to avoid missing when people did meaningful things, like reaching for weapons. "Enough! You and I both know well how this issue should have been handled! To keep such a matter secret, what in the Abyss were you thinking!?"

"That is droll, coming from you!" Gorion bit out. " _You,_ mind. You who never share anything with any, even when it would help, because 'a secret is not a secret if you tell anyone.' Who are you to lecture me when your whole existence is _entirely_ built on that double standard!?"

Cyrus stared between his knife and the Blackstaff. There was no way to end the mighty artefact the same way he'd ended the table, not with the enhancement and other magics on it, but maybe if he sketched out the death of each enchantment one by one first?

"We are nearing the cusp of one of Alaundo's most critical foretellings and you hide something of this magnitude under the veil of _family matters_!?"

"He is _my_ son and in _my_ keeping! I have taken the necessary steps to let the relevant parties know of all salient facts in case of the worst. Beyond that, my business is just that. _My_ business!"

"Necessary steps! Relevant parties! I suppose there is no need to worry then!" Khelben outright shouted in derision. "One day you will just drop dead, we do not even need to look beyond this room for the most likely cause, and the relevant parties will take over! I suppose Elminster will step in at that point, pat the boy on the head and pass on some vague portents, after which he will merrily go back to his Dale and damn the consequences on everyone and everything else!"

He called him 'boy' even though he thought Cyrus was just some abomination posing as one. An abomination that had somehow deceived his way into the graces and protection of the ones in that room, bar Ulraunt. Cyrus could tell because the man had already come up with over five ways to kill him and dispose of the remains, distinction between the two steps not necessarily required.

"So proclaims the mighty Masked Lord of Waterdeep," Gorion hissed. "Do not pretend you are any different from what you disdain in others! Your pursuits are no less single-minded or harmful to people and causes you have not claimed as your own, if they measure up at all! Nor are your plots and schemes always wanted or needed!"

Khelben Arunsun levelled a searing glare on the old sage then. "It seems age and the strain of raising so troublesome a ward have blurred the line between reasoning and rationalisation."

But Father only glared back just as heatedly. "And it seems power and reputation have blurred the line between criticism and insult."

"Oh, I have no doubt you have many insults that you would like to hurl at me yourself, and I am sure you will be transmitting them to the _relevant parties_ after my departure, among many other misgivings."

The two sages glared at each other much like Gorion and Ulraunt had done years prior on the balcony.

But there was no verse on which to base an end to that heated discussion so the two old men stood and respectively sat, glaring, for quite some time while Ulraunt and Tethtoril watched on, one with vindication and the other with distress. Distress and a fair measure of outrage on the behalf of Gorion and even Cyrus himself, surprisingly.

But this was all _such_ a waste of time. Inevitable things had already been decided so there really wasn't any need for further wrangling.

He reached up and tugged on Gorion's sleeve.

Gorion started so badly that he almost jumped in place, and the look he levelled at him was raw with such stunned surprise that Cyrus almost changed what he wanted to say. Almost. "I would like to go spend what time I still have near Imoen, Father."

Gorion stepped forward and reached out to him, but didn't dare lay hands on him for some reason.

Cyrus blinked at the chaos of shock, amazement, hope and naked alarm for a few moments, then shook his head and met Gorion's eyes properly. "May I?"

"Son…" Gorion breathed. Hoarsely, almost. "That… this… this is the first time in your whole life that you ever asked for anything."

Blackstaff's grey/dark/clotted churned with something old and tepid but it passed almost instantly.

"Cyrus…" Father hunched forward but still seemed afraid he'd shatter if touched. A myriad questions formed and died before they were spoken, then the man fell back on one that had become a defining element of their bond. "Son. What are you _feeling_ right now?"

The boy blinked and looked up from the wood scraps that had once been a table. "I suppose I am a bit curious if the Wall of the Faithless still exists."

The world seemed to tilt on its axis upon being faced with a topic that had come so completely out of nowhere. At least that was what their emotions implied.

Cyrus didn't really understand it, but then he didn't understand many things. "The texts following the Godswar say that Myrkul was destroyed by Midnight, the new Mystra. I was wondering if the wall broke with his death or if Cyric decided to keep using it." He personally didn't estimate very good odds of it not being there. Not under Cyric the Mad.

"Child what makes you ask that? And so suddenly?" Tethtoril questioned when Gorion seemed unable to.

"I figured it might be useful to know where I'll end up once I die three or four days from now." Gorion's heart seemed to outright stop and Cyrus caught Khelben Arunsun jerk in place from the corner of his eye. Barely, given that his grey/dark/clotted practically shuddered in shock inside, though he didn't show much of it on the outside. Cyrus turned to look at the Archmage, though it was still Tethtoril he was talking to. "The exact time of my death hasn't been strictly decided, even though the certainty of it is no longer in question." He turned his head to look at his frozen tutor again. "I figured I may as well bask in the light of Imoen's spirit for as long as I can manage between now and then."

The next moment he'd been shoved back and Gorion had interposed himself between him and the Archmage of Waterdeep, though Cyrus stumbled sideways enough that he still had a line of sight to the much older man. "He'll have you over my dead body!"

But the odds of Cyrus' death did not waver in the least, and neither did Gorion's own death get any closer or probable.

And Khelben didn't even pay the man any mind, speaking at the young dwarf as if there wasn't a full grown man between he and him. "And so the lie is revealed at last." That didn't really make much sense, but people tended to speak more than was strictly needed and it seemed the Archmage was no different in that regard, at least this time. "Tell me boy, if that term even applies to you, what do you really see, if indeed it is seeing at all? You claim to see lines and then profess foresight. Which is it?"

But the boy was already shaking his head. "The lines are just death that hasn't happened yet. As for everything else…" He frowned, thinking. "It's not foresight. It's… extrapolation I suppose. I can see the odds of a planned attempt on someone's or something's life based on the competence and experience of the one setting them up versus those of the one being set up for murder." He shrugged and met the Archmage's eyes square on, even as the time window between him and death shortened by leaps the more he spoke. "You've decided I need to die and you only need to wait until you are strong enough to leave your bed to do it."

Gorion _snarled_ and pulled him back but didn't dare turn his back on other man. "I won't let you have him!" He switched to Cyrus for just the one moment he needed, since he dared no longer leave the Archmage out of his line of sight. "I won't let even _him_ have you. Over my dead body." He repeated, tone so frigid that Cyrus thought he would have felt a chill on his spine if he were anyone else, but he hadn't become all that much better at sensing anything at all, so he didn't. "Son, get back."

The boy obeyed, largely because he was manhandled into it, but this was still such a waste of time and effort. "He doesn't plan to do it now. And even if he did, it makes no difference that you disagree." Gorion clenched his fists hard enough that they shook. "He's simply much, much better at premeditated murder than you are."

Blackstaff's soul-shadow outright sputtered with enraged indignation. "And so your poisonous voice continues to sow discord. How very _not_ surprising, boy, if that really is what you are! Watch your words lest this death you are so certain of decide not to delay in coming for you!"

"There will be no murdering of anyone within these walls!" Tethoril roared over the near-boiling tension. "And there will be no threats either! Have I been clear enough!?"

Cyrus shook his head. "It makes no difference what you say or how clearly, tutor. The certainties haven't changed. Just like different opinions made no difference for any of the other the deaths he delivered over the past nine hundred years."

The whole world seemed to stall.

"What's this!?" Tethtoril shouted.

"Nine hundred years…?" Ulraunt breathed even as Khelben's soul-shade seemed to freeze for long moments, as if he hadn't intended or expected that particular piece of trivia to be thrown out, especially not so carelessly.

Gorion blinked slowly at the older man. "And so the lie is revealed at last," he literally tossed the Archmage's words back in his face. "Khelben the _Younger_ indeed." His voice turned low and accusatory. "Is there anything real about you in what you show the world?" He paused. "Is there anything real about you _at all?_ " His eyes roamed over the man on the bed. "Is that even what you really look like?"

No answer.

"Cyrus," Gorion said coldly, never averting his unblinking glare from Khelben Arunsun even then. "Please describe this _death_ that is hanging over you right now."

Ancient black eyes bore into his but Cyrus didn't feel intimidated or afraid because he never felt much of anything. "I'm not sure what details I can share, since they seem to keep changing every other second. I just know it will happen when it happens." He looked helplessly at Gorion. "One way or another. The only constant seems to be that it has to be soon because he can't afford to delay his trip to Tethyr." And it became so very clear that moment that no one had had any idea where the man was headed before that moment.

There was a drawn-out silence.

Gorion, as expected, broke it. "Tethyr is a long way from Waterdeep…" He said ponderingly. "One wonders why you would need to go there, especially with any measure of haste, given the utter chaos that has ruled that country since the fall of the Lions' Dynasty. And the Harpers already have people looking into those matters …" A realization seemed to come over him then. "Has your habit to designate rulers for Shadowdale kindled a taste in you for setting up your own kings in lands even further removed?"

The Archmage's eyes snapped from Cyrus to his Father. "His hold on you is truly mighty if you so easily believe everything he says."

"I believe everything he says because he has never said a lie in his life, to me or anyone else!" The man was visibly shaking, he was so mad from insult and betrayal. "I am tempted to ask my son why you would be going there but there is only one way he would be able to even tell. Dare I ask whose murder you are going there to premeditate?" His lips curled into something ugly. "Will you even stop at one? What next, shall I learn that at some point you have also become a thief!?"

Cyrus' head snapped from looking at his father to stare at Arunsun when his self-shade flared with a colour that could not be anything but guilt. Guilt for something he was planning to do, not already done, but something planned as part of a greater plot to engineer the deaths of a number of different other people so Cyrus perceived the concept regardless. And the emotional colour. It had been very, very faint, but months of trying to puzzle out the nearly indistinguishable but very real and numerous variations in Imoen's brilliance meant he had a lot of practice to draw upon.

It became clear a moment later that his reaction had not been missed by anyone there.

"I see…" And Father's voice could not be described as anything but bitter.

Seemingly having enough, Khelben Arunsun rallied together – his self-shadow tightened around itself though it did not drip with the blood of others any less – and glared, truly and unrestrainedly at Cyrus for the first time. "You, boy, see too much."

"Do I?" What even was the meaning of too much? "What does that even mean?"

"How can you even sit there and say that?" Gorion wondered aloud still looking at the ancient wizard. "Sit there on your millennium-old trove of dead bodies, vanished nations and extinct societies and act as the offended party while plotting my son's murder in your mind?" The old sage shook his head in disbelief. "What could possibly be _just_ in that?"

Blackstaff did not see fit to justify himself.

Cyrus did have a question about that, however. "Is it supposed to be?"

Gorion started and looked down at him. "What?"

"Is it supposed to be? Just, I mean."

"Is it supposed to be just…?" Tethtoril echoed. "Child, why would you even ask that? Why would you doubt…?"

The dwarf blinked. "Shouldn't I? The moral arc of the universe doesn't bend towards justice." Gorion's light seemed to dim as a familiar misery bubbled upwards, and the soul-shades of the others either recoiled or thrummed in surprise at his bluntness. "It _can't_. Evil is actively encouraged and enforced by Ao." The boy gestured towards the door and the library beyond. "There is a godly domain for every vice and ill thought. Every single text of lore agrees on that even when they disagree on everything else. And now with the Godswar…" He trailed off. "There is nothing _just_ about the most powerful god of present times being the _mad_ god of death, murder, strife, lies, intrigue, deception and illusion."

Everyone stared at him like they couldn't believe what they were hearing. Even the age-old Archmage.

Cyrus honestly couldn't understand why but it happened so very often that he was sure his inability to feel the same as others meant he must be missing on a whole lot of context.

"Is that why?" Khelben asked him, arresting the attention of everyone else again. "If you truly see your death approaching as you claim, is that why you do not try to fight against it, assuming your apparent indifference is not an act itself." The old man had a strange look in his eyes and disbelief formed a bizarre mixture behind his voice, blending with uncertainty and the ghost of warm lips and skin on his and memories of times long disappeared. "Because you believe the universe to be an unjust place so you believe there is no justice in people either?"

"No," Cyrus answered easily. "It's really not that complicated at all. There have always been people outside Candlekeep who wanted me dead. It's not surprising that one would find his way here eventually." Tethtoril's glow dimmed with _wrong/wrong/wrong/unfair_ , but Cyrus hadn't finished. "As for everything else…" He shrugged. "You're simply the only one whose decision has any stake on whether I live or die next." Gorion's soul-self lurched beside him, but Cyrus ploughed on "So despite how clearly Father's or anyone else's moral compass _does_ point towards justice, it doesn't matter because yours doesn't." He wondered if he would feel resigned or liberated if he could feel anything at all.

"Unbelievable," Ulraunt muttered from where he stood, watching everything. "He does not even realize or care about the pain he causes his professed father with every word he speaks."

That was an odd thing to say considering that he was only speaking the truth. Should he start lying, then? Gorion hadn't told him to, so he wouldn't and didn't.

"How can you be so certain of what you say, boy?" Arunsun asked slowly, though Cyrus couldn't tell if he was truly curious what with the turmoil that his self-shadow had been thrown in after the dwarf said that last thing. "How claim you to understand what others feel and how they live their lives? Or is there yet another thing besides _death_ that you see." He narrowed his cold eyes even further. "How claim you to know anything of what I believe or feel?"

Cyrus ignored the scepticism because it didn't have any bearing on the situation either. The certainties hadn't shifted even then. "It's all there." He gestured to all of him. "Everything you've killed is grafted into your spirit. I know I'm likely missing a lot of the context since I don't generally feel anything of what other people feel, even though I can see feeling shining inside them." He tilted his head. "Or _not_ shining. But I do know what I _do_ see, and in you it's blood." Khelben's eyes flashed but his self-shade said a lot more than that. Too much. "Blood clotted over soul-cutting gashes deep enough that even the ones of centuries ago are bleeding still, even now." He wondered if he would feel anything due to the rapt attention he was treated with by everyone there, or the chaotic swirls of _how/what/why/should-I-do-anything_ that overcame each of the adults. "And perhaps it's also down to similarity. Maybe I _can_ distinguish you more clearly than others." Others like Imoen. He looked away from the soul then, to meet the man's black eyes instead. "You're almost as dead on the inside as I am."

For one, heavy moment, Cyrus felt like he had no waiting to do for death at all.

And as if to prove him wrong about the comparison between them, Khelben Blackstaff's grey/dark/clotted burst into hot/tar/fire. The grip on Blackstaff looked like it could have warped the wood if the powerful item could be harmed at all. "Listen carefully boy, because I will not repeat myself." The man's voice was iced over but Cyrus expected it would have still burned if he could feel anything at all. "There is _nothing_ alike between your nature and mine."

Nine-year-old eyes looked into those of a man a hundred times older as the world seemed to shy away.

Then the hot/tar/fire simmered down and sunk back beneath grey/dark/clotted and Cyrus realized he really had missed enough of the context that he had been wrong about this one thing. "I suppose not…" He broke eye contact and stared down at his palms, at the blood flowing beneath his flesh and the total lack of soul-light that set him apart from everyone else. "Perhaps some souls are simply born into death. They never knew how to live."

The guillotine lifted from just above the spine of Cyrus' mortality and he knew he once again had a few more days to live through, but he didn't pay it any mind. It wasn't worth dwelling on, no more than everything else he didn't feel anything over. He just stared at the blood running through the veins inside him, wondering how something that kept him moving, speaking and generally carrying out as if he lived could seem so very not alive at all.

"Tell me, boy," Khelben said quietly. He sounded spellbound, inexplicably. "What would you call justice?"

"Justice…" Cyrus echoed the word as he just stared at the bleak/dark/nothing. "Justice… would be if my soul and Imoen's had been swapped at birth." Gorion uttered that pained, familiar ' _no'_ he never seemed to contain or even realize he said whenever Cyrus said he felt nothing, but it had been a long time since the old man had still had it in him to feel enough to be emotionally overcome in any manner. The boy let his hands drop and looked up to gaze at him. "She's everything you hoped I'd be when you gave me the name you did." Cyrus mouth twisted on its own for the first time ever then, and he wondered if he really felt sadness or if it was just an echo of something else. Or someone else. "She would have made you happy."

The old man sagged so totally that the boy almost felt fear at the idea that he may fall from the weariness overcoming him so completely. "Son…" his voice trembled. "Why do you speak as if you don't believe you deserve to live?" He made to reach for him, but he seemed to lack the energy for even that. "You deserve to live as much as anyone else."

"Do I?" He seemed to be asking that a lot, regarding increasingly many different things. "I've brought you nothing but enough misery to smother everything you ever were." Gorion's fists clenched tight enough to go white, as white as the skin on his face. "The only time you were anywhere near happy was long ago, when mother still lived." Grief literally engulfed all the defiance and anger that Gorion had been clinging to like a lifeline. "Your soul was so beautiful then…" Grief boiled and subsumed everything, then thickened until there was only the misery that the man had only barely been keeping down for so long. "There's barely anything of that glow in you now. There hasn't been since the balcony." Misery that fell inwards as finally as it did the first time, leaving only the black pit of anguish.

Tethtoril moved and uttered something or other in a low voice but Cyrus didn't have it in him to pay attention, let alone recognize the Spell of Sending for what it was, and for once no one else seemed any more inclined to care about anything than he was.

He looked down at his hands again, seeking and failing to find anything resembling something that wouldn't be bleak/dark/nothing.

Perhaps having his place swapped with Imoen's wouldn't have been justice after all, being that it seemed more and more likely that he had no soul of his own at all.

For long minutes no one said anything more.

Then there was a knock on the door.

Tethtoril moved quickly to open it, revealing Hull.

"You sent for me, First Reader?" The young man tried and failed not to look around at the sombre scene. He also looked tired and the bags under his eyes spoke of something more than a sleepless night.

That's right. Davros had been his friend.

Cyrus wondered if he would feel guilt at that realization if he were able to feel anything at all.

"Yes. I have a task for you." The robed man came over to Cyrus and physically herded him to the door where he handed him over in Hull's keeping. "Keep an eye on him. And if you need to leave him for any reason, make sure there is someone else with him at all times." His stern gaze was not at all at odds with the fierce determination gleaming from inside. "At _all times_ , am I understood?" Once Hull nodded, Tethtoril gazed over the other adults, pointedly looked right at Arunsun for a moment, then meaningfully looked to Hull again. "It appears there are certain threats levelled against him from sources we had previously overlooked."

Hull's grip suddenly tightened on his hand. How odd. "Understood, sir," Hull said, voice hard. "You can count on me."

"Good. Off you go then. In the meantime…" Tethtoril turned to address the other three adults and very deliberately said what he said next before Hull and Cyrus were out of hearing range. Before the door had even been closed shut. "In the meantime, _we_ three are going to have a long, _long_ discussion to figure out when it became right and proper to measure morality in terms of willingness to murder children!"

Hull's grip on his hand became even firmer and the Watcher pushed him in front of him and herded him away as quickly as he could.

_Emulation_

The wind was strange. It had no lines of death to trace at all but it died on its own when it hit him or the cliffs behind and around him.

" _I'm bored! Bored, bored, BORED! They tied me to the bed, can you believe it? This is terrible!"_

The sea, though, was deathless even in sunlight.

" _They even used weird knots I never saw before! It's a crime, I say. A crime!"_

How similar the sea was in colour and illusory nature to the sky.

" _Tell me a story!_

Cyrus had said alright.

" _Thanks! You're the best guy someone could accidentally pester into befriending!"_

In the days of the year of the Tower-

" _Not that one, I already know it! Wait, what do you mean you were telling it wrong last time? WHAT? There's a child-friendly version? You insulted Imoen the Magnificent with a children's tale!? I can't believe you!"_

The sea was similar in colour and illusory nature to the sky. But despite that it was so alike, despite that it effectively blended with the sky at night, it was still the sea, not the sky.

" _Alright, that's enough out of you two! If you can't abide by the peace in the house of healing, then you'll have to do without each other."_

Perhaps that had been his mistake. That he'd sought to _imitate_ rather than _emulate_.

" _Sorry that happened, kid. I know you really like to spend time with her even though I'll be bugg- uhm, damned if I understand why. Maybe she'll be more willing to listen to the healer's orders after a bit of time out (not that it ever worked before). Besides, now you get to spend time with me!"_

Perhaps if he'd spent as much time looking everywhere else as he did looking at Imoen he would have seen the changes undergone by everyone else. Known that he'd been noticed and taken under consideration by many other people even if he hadn't done the same in return. Known of the life paths travelled by all the others. Lives that had to be as vivid and complex as Imoen's own, as Gorion's had been once long ago, otherwise they would not be able to feel as happy or content as they seemed to, even if they didn't glow as brightly as hope did.

" _Listen, kid, me and the others swiped some of the good stuff from the cellars and plan to get together tonight in the western tower. If you can get permission or manage to sneak out again, come drop by. I know you're still young but you're a dwarf so you should be fine with a swig or two at least!"_

Happy and content even as they wrestled with loss and grief over the man he'd killed.

" _Bullshit!"_

An opinion that seemed to be shared by most of the Watchers. And a fair few tutors and scribes in the keep once Parda caught wind of what Tethtoril had ordered Hull to do. Nearly every single one of them, in-training or not, seemed to quietly but definitely rally around him over the two days that followed the morning discussion in the First Guest's bedroom on Candlekeep's sixth floor. Rather than Hull or one other person with him at all times, there always seemed to be at least three or four in line of sight, concealed or pretending to be idle or otherwise occupied with varying degrees of success.

" _I honestly can't imagine anyone thinking they could get to you here inside the walls."_

But the odds of death hadn't slipped from total certainty at all, in spite of them, so they wouldn't make any impact in the end.

" _We'll see about that!"_

If it made any difference, at some point during the second day the situation had gone from the relevant parties wanting to kill him to only wanting him dead.

" _And what the heck do you mean they_ _ **only**_ _want you dead? Like that's any difference!"_

Things got particularly strange on day three when Hull showed up near the hedge he was trimming and rushed him off to the warehouse undercellar. Things got even more peculiar when he handed him Jondalar's sword and told him to do his thing and see if he could make it stick this time.

" _Heard the windbag's gonna be up and about later. And before you ask it's totally legitimate. Jondalar is entirely on board with this but can't be seen with you or it'll be suspicious."_

It was at that point that Cyrus begun to wonder what kind of conspiracy the Watchers had dreamed up with regard to him but did as bid and spent a few hours holding the sword in his hand and its death-dealing history in his mind, huddled cross-legged behind the largest mound of potato crates in the warehouse basement. Held them until the remembered skill went from short-term to long-term memory in one, full influx.

Of course, the certainty of him dying if Khelben decided on it, and the fact that the Archmage still slipped occasionally in that odd state between wanting and not wanting to do it after all, didn't change his projected lifespan at all even after he did as Hull bid of him.

" _That was so weird. You didn't even twitch for the whole afternoon. I know, I asked Fuller. And you didn't even realize he was here, did you? Seems it_ _ **is**_ _possible to sneak up on you after all."_

As he handed back the sword and accepted the _dagger_ that Jondalar had provided for the same purpose ( _But he says you can keep that one for good)_ Cyrus wondered why they went to all those lengths. Hull had been beyond incensed at the question.

" _Because you're_ _ **ours**_ _! I don't care what some old northern windbag has to say! Yes you're weird and quiet and creepy, but you're also polite, honest, hard-working and damned brilliant and your Dad loves you like you have no idea!"_

And that was the truest thing Hull had ever said. Cyrus had no idea how much his father loved him. Had no idea how much anyone loved him. Had no idea what love was supposed to feel like at all.

He wondered if Hull had loved Davros the same.

" _Not the same, love is never the same, and the love between spouses and between father and son is_ _ **special**_ _, but yes, I loved him. We all did."_

Cyrus supposed he should feel sorry for killing him.

" _And the Oghmite priests should feel sorry for not offering to resurrect him, and the old windbag should feel sorry for casting the magic in the first place, especially since he could cast another Wish to bring him back without even suffering the same backlash. But they aren't sorry and as long as they continue not being sorry you shouldn't feel sorry either."_

The boy didn't think that made any sense.

" _I am a man in mourning! I am exercising my gods-given right to biasedly choose who to be angry at and I've decided it's them and not you."_

The fourth day turned out the most bizarre, or that is how he suspected he'd label it if he could feel anything at all. The Watchers, scribes, tutors and whoever else had somehow, overnight, turned into a messengers service whose sole purpose was to let Cyrus know where the Archmage was at all times and steer him clear of his line of sight by going this way, that way, the other way and _no, dammit, the other other way!_ Cyrus eventually asked why they came to think it was Khelben Arunsun that was after him. Tethtoril hadn't been _that_ blatant, had he? He could just as easily have implied that Khelben Arunsun had been the one to warn them of the supposed assassination plot.

" _I'm a Watcher, kid. I see things. And I also hear things. Besides, who else could it be? Until The First Reader comes to set the record straight you're not allowed to go near him."_

But there was no assassination plot. _Really_. Gorion had told him so just that morning so that all was only liable to get him and the rest of the Watchers involved in serious trouble. Especially once Khelben Arunsun called them out on their insult to his character.

" _We know, obviously. But unless you know a way out of the keep that we don't you're stuck with us."_

And while Cyrus didn't care enough about anything to make an emotional decision, that comment did make him realize that it would be a real shame if he up and died without experiencing the outside of Candlekeep at least once. Khelben could go from wanting him dead back to wanting to kill him at any time, depending on whatever Tethtoril had said or done to get him to reconsider his initial decision on the matter. And the Watchers and others would only see their lives complicated for nothing in either case. Which Cyrus reasoned he would have a problem with if he could feel to begin with.

Which was why the young dwarf snuck out of sight the first chance he got, made his way to the battlements through the nearest tower and, after making sure the patrolling sentries weren't looking in his direction, sprinted out of the tower and leaped feet-first in-between the nearest pair of crenels, twisting to grab at the edge for the best position to start gouging hand and footholds. After that, all he had to do was scale down the wall and subsequent cliff face the same way he'd climbed to Ulraunt's office.

Easy.

It was the height of irony, Cyrus suspected, that Candlekeep's sentries were less alert in daytime than they were during the night, but it worked to his benefit. Or deficit if this turned out to be the worst decision he'd ever taken, which was highly likely.

But not important.

The wind brushed his face, and Cyrus decided he'd spent enough time there, on that jutting rock half-way between the top of the walls and the grassy lip of the outcropping Candlekeep stood atop. From here it was all rough stone and wind-beaten cliff face.

As he scaled down the rest of the way, Cyrus wondered if he would feel annoyed at the extra work or pleased at the variety.

When his booted feet touched the grass, Cyrus gave himself a moment to contemplate the reality of having left his home. Even if home was just a few meters behind, however high up.

He didn't feel anything.

Nodding at that confirmation that there was nothing out of the ordinary, he gave the sea one last glance, then turned around and walked purposely in a very specific direction. Granted, it was the only direction available, but it was specific nonetheless. A very specific source of possible death, to be exact. Of the painful and flesh-skewering, possibly limb-ripping variety.

Five minutes later, Cyrus Anwar stood at the mouth of a wolf den and his death had already flashed through his mind enough times and with sufficient variation that he knew exactly where the nesting wolf mother was, how many cubs she had, how hungry they were, how hungry she was and everything else pertinent to his odds of suffering a messy demise.

Ten more minutes later, the dwarf stared in bemusement as the wolf mother growled, barked and generally chased her cubs out of their own den. Cubs which she followed after, slowly backing out of the cave and never breaking eye contact with him until she was all the way out and ready to bolt.

Which she did.

Cyrus stared.

The wolves didn't come back.

Well.

Seemed predators had something in common with livestock after all. Which was to say, they were all terrified of him for some reason. Probably whatever reason Khelben Arunsun still felt he should die for, whatever it was.

Or perhaps animals did have a way to know what you were thinking when you looked them in the eye and the wolf mother just didn't feel comfortable with all the ways Cyrus had come up with for using Jondalar's dagger and the garden pick to kill her as soon as she thought to jump him. He'd been in the middle of planning the 32nd scenario when she started to forcefully herd her cubs out into the world and away from him.

He suspected he should feel bad for chasing someone out of their home. He wondered if there was going to be an angry ranger knocking on Candlekeep's doors next week with a complaint about small dwarven homewreckers.

A whimper snapped him out of his musings.

There was a wolf pup left at the back of the cave.

As he walked towards it, Cyrus thought he might have felt rather like he was part of some bizarre play. What would nature be thinking that something like this would even happen? What were the odds even? Had the wolf female left him behind as tribute in exchange for being allowed to live by the greater predator? He took back everything he assumed about her, she was a terrible parent.

He didn't even look like a runt, even though he whined pitifully at his feet, backed away against the cave wall.

Cyrus bent down and picked it up by the scruff. Then he stared at it for a while. "I never imagined I'd ever run into anyone more hopeless than I am."

It was at this point that Gorion would make some noise or other, speak some words to lead him away from that train of thought and towards something else he could chew in his mind.

But he wasn't there then, so Cyrus tucked the pup against his chest and walked over to stand in front of the cave wall furthest in. The one separating him from sites of visions of masonry, torches and trick steps tied to lethal traps in the alcoves. Images and remembered words of ancient architects of long ago formed recollection of premeditated murder via hidden springboards and mechanical systems tasked to make sure that everyone entering the catacombs would either have business there or never leave at all.

Well, the boy thought blandly. He'd tried living peacefully. He was bound to try to live dangerously at some point.


	3. The Most Hopeful of Dirges

"Oh, goodie goodie! I've gone and found ye first! You are the ward of Gorion, no doubt?"

Cyrus stared at the human that had accosted him in one of the guesthouses just after he'd had his morning meal in the Candlekeep Hearth. The guesthouse he'd not have even had a reason to enter if not for the urge to _murder/death/kill_ that drew his attention. Hopeless urge at that. Never before had he imagined that he would run into someone in possession of such disparity between their desire to murder someone and their ability to do it. Or, more precisely, inability. The human's odds of striking blood on him let alone killing him were literally lower than his odds of him falling on his own knife. "Amazing," the 20-year-old dwarf said in astonishment. He couldn't help himself when faced with such an improbable example of intelligence decay.

The human grinned brazenly. "You don't know the half of it! But since I can be kind, I'll make sure our encounter shall be quite simple for you. Plainly put, I have made it my mission to end your life. Success will mean a little respect among my peers. So you see, you can do very little except die!"

"How did you make it past the walls?" It begged asking. The fool (and Cyrus called him that objectively) was so far removed from the concept of successful murder that Cyrus only got the faintest glimpses of his history, and even those only because of the intent. "And why would you look for or wait for me next to the busiest and most crowded of Candlekeep's buildings outside the library itself _?_ That makes no sense." Literally, the Hearth was a dining hall massive enough to house a great circular firepit surrounded by several smaller firepits. It was nearly always filled with people, monks and visitors alike. Seekers, as they were called.

Was the fool going to jump him as soon as he saw him despite that?

But the simpleton did not seem to even listen to him. "Upsetting, I know, for me to keep you from your attempts at understanding your inevitable fate. I apologize for not fully explaining my motives, but I am on a rather tight schedule and exposition is simply not my forte!"

The concept of self-absorption had never been a mystery to Cyrus, especially after he learned the definition of the word and noticed it apply fairly well to himself when he was younger, but seeing it embodied to such an extent was definitely new. "And who are you exactly?" Because for all that the (charitably called) idiot before him professed his desire to kill him, he seemed to be waiting for a reply.

"Who I am is unimportant, but who YOU are is very much so. I apologize for this dirty bit of business, but I must seek your death. A pity, I know, but it would seem your head is worth an exceptional amount to me. I kill you myself and I need not share credit with anyone."

The attack was totally broadcasted. It was also sloppier than Dreppin's attempts at milking Nessie after Midsummer festivities. What did the fool even expect to hit, chopping down at him that way?

Cyrus waited until the attack got close enough to actually register as a (minute) threat and, once his mind read all the man's history that resulted in that (barely) feasible attempted murder, grabbed the dagger-holding appendage and broke it at the wrist. One-handed.

Then pulled the human – _Shank –_ mid-scream and laid him out with a headbutt.

He wondered if things were such that an obituary would have to be written for that vanished friend of sapient life known as common sense.

Once he was sure none of the furniture had been disturbed or that the fool had started bleeding from the nose or wherever else – it would not do to have to wipe the blood out of the floorboards – the dwarf grabbed the man by the throat and proceeded to drag him out.

"What on Toril-!" Parda gasped as soon as he saw him, which was actually quite fast because Cyrus had only covered around 20 feet or so since leaving that guesthouse.

"Nothing to worry about, tutor," Cyrus said truthfully as he continued to drag the human across the Candlekeep grounds amidst the Watchers', seekers' and passing scribes' incredulous double-takes. "Just clearing out some vermin." The incredulous stares from the patrolling Watchers immediately switched to suspicious glares sent Shank's way.

"Child, what are you doing with that man?" Parda found his voice, though he did not make to stop him or otherwise impede him once he was walking in step with him. " _Who_ is that man?"

"One of two humans that infiltrated the Keep last night in an attempt to kill me before anyone else got me first." Learning all history pertaining to the assassination attempt had been the whole goal of letting the attack get as close as it did.

Parda gasped and one of the two Watchers that had seen and begun to approach him cursed behind his helmet and at once made an about-face towards the gatehouse. The other one continued to approach from the Inn's direction where Cyrus himself had to pass through on his way. "Okay, I admit I am morbidly curious." Even the Watcher, Erik, didn't try to stop him, just joining him on his other side. "What's his story? Actually, never mind. I think I'll enjoy however little time of blissful ignorance I still have left."

"Alright," Cyrus said. His rapport with the Watchers was defined by mutual consideration and trust never broken since that first fiasco when he was 9. But for all that the Watchers considered him theirs to safeguard watch over, they'd also learned to be wary of asking him questions because his answers tended to give information in doses that were either too much, too little, too strange or any combination of the three. In their opinion anyway.

Fortunately, in this case it did not take too long before everything would get sorted out.

Cyrus dragged Shank all the way around the keep until he was at the southern-most bunkhouse. That was where the other murder/death/kill intent aimed at him originated. Then he allowed Shank to kiss the dirt – literally – and went in before anyone could ask more or offer to go instead.

"'Ere there. You're Gorion's little whelp, aren't ya? Yeah, you-!" One uppercut laid him out as surely as the first. This one – Carbos – fell on his back, though, unlike his unwilling accomplice, so Cyrus dragged _him_ out by the ankle.

If this was supposed to be a prelude to him living dangerously again for a while, it was not an encouraging one at all.

"There he is now, Karan, just- WHAT IN THE WORLD?" Parda gasped again. "Another one!?"

"Hello, Karan," Cyrus nodded at the second gaping, green-robed monk staring at him from next to the yellow-attired Parda. Truly, the "politely grave" mien that all Candlekeep monks cultivated throughout their lives had deserted them entirely. "I'll be with you in just a few minutes if you need anything." Then he bent over, grabbed Shank by the throat again and proceeded to drag both imbeciles in the direction of the gatehouse.

They passed four more astonished Watchers by the time they were in sight of the inner gatehouse, as well as two gaping nobles and that couple of recent amputee plus even more recent noblewoman-turned-squire Imoen had run around matchmaking the other day.

Their strange group was greeted near the gatehouse by Amanther, the tall and impressive human that tended to dress like a lay monk but was in fact a wizard practised in the talent of swiftly recognizing spells by the first moments of their castings. Next to him was the ever cheerful Larth (in actuality a shrewd judge of character with knowledge of more than a dozen languages, all of which he'd taken time to teach Cyrus when he learned of his impressive memory). The third person was the Gatewarden himself, the grey-haired, burly Thaerabho whose most noteworthy feature was a sword-scarred cheek. He had a secret history of "dealing" with mages, witches, warlocks and any other spellcasters not part of some clergy. They were an impressive assembly, especially compared to Hull whose post they had decided to gather near. Clearly, they knew Cyrus well enough to expect him to make his way to Hull regarding whatever matter had caused a Watcher to rush around with news of Gorion's Ward dragging unconscious people across the Candlekeep grounds.

Just as they reached their welcoming committee, Tethtoril emerged from the inner courtyard and joined them. "Well now," he said in that softspoken tone that, in Cyrus' memory, he'd only ever eschewed back during that first, fateful meeting between Cyrus and Khelben Arunsun. "What is their story then, child?"

"And why," Thaerabho continued sternly, "did you take it upon yourself to make such a display of them?" He didn't seem to be worried about their unconscious state compared to the show put on in front of the ever-present throng of visitors.

Cyrus dumped the two half-wits and kicked Shank in the head – he'd been stirring already, so he supposed being hard-headed wasn't a total loss – and looked up at the Gatewarden. "They're here to kill me." Behind Thaerabho, Hull glared down at the two. "But that's not the issue."

"And what, then, is the issue?" Amanther spoke up for the first time.

"The way they got in last night." Cyrus gave the two senseless humans a look of distaste, then gazed around at his many listeners. "They were teleported in."

This immediately caused tension to settle upon the assembly. There were very few spots where teleportation magic worked, and they were only known by specific monks trusted to carry emergency messages. Anyone trying to translocate into or through Candlekeep without that knowledge failed and fell stunned by the attempt at best.

"This is grave news," Tethtoril said in the following silence. He treated Cyrus to a look heavy with meaning. "I believe we have confirmation of Gorion's unstated reasons for so abruptly deciding that you and he should depart the keep before sundown."

"I almost wish I could share that opinion, First Reader," Cyrus sighed, frowning down at the insensate pair. Or nearly insensate since Carbos seemed to be twitching. He kicked him in the head like he'd done to his grudging accomplice in incompetence. Then kicked Shank a second time just to be sure. Nodding, he looked up at the exasperated-to-resigned audience who nevertheless seemed reluctant to disapprove of his actions in the face of his well-known reputation as fair-reasoned, well-mannered, uncompromisingly honest and well-meaning person, barring extreme circumstances.

"And why, exactly, do you disagree?" Tethtoril asked.

"Because while these two seem to be acting based on a ransom put on my head by someone or other, the one who sent them didn't." He paused, well used to the suppressed sighs caused by his casual attitude towards his own approaching death.

"It is not like you to be so roundabout in sharing facts, lad," Larth said thoughtfully. "What is it?"

"I'm having trouble believing that even _my_ life could take a turn this bizarre." He wondered if having his wolf nearby would make him feel any better but Arawn had been allowed out hunting for the day in anticipation of being reunited with him on the road. "But if the readings I got off these two are real then the one who teleported them in – blindly – doesn't care about the ransom or whatever else at all." And what had the mage done for Tymora to favour him so ridiculously?

More looks were exchanged.

"What _does_ he want then?" Larth asked curiously. "Who is he?"

Cyrus sighed and his mouth twisted in what may actually have been exasperation. He'd never felt it before. "A Wild Mage." The dwarf sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "A Wild Mage nutcase who wants my spleen."

The wide-eyed, open-mouthed and generally stunned reactions caused by that flat summation were about as wide-ranging and impactful to the future prospects of his attackers as that disaster of 11 years before when he'd been so caught up in the idea of awaiting his own execution that he never noticed accidentally framing Khelben Arunsun for murder.

"-. .-"

There might have been some yips and wet-nosed nudges pushed at him for a while, before they grew rarer and fainter. As well as some actual words. From an actual living person even, eventually, rather than one of the ghosts prowling the Candlekeep grounds. Or undergrounds in this case. However, he only registered them – not that he noticed he _was_ registering them while they were happening – due to his perfect memory. And even then he paid them no mind. The book he was reading was just so _interesting_ -

The tome was abruptly yanked out of his hands and his mind suddenly remembered that there was more to existence than sitting on the floor and reading from… a manual on better use and build-up of the physical body. Or what _had_ been a manual on effective physical exercise but had at some point turned into a magically-exhorting text about anything and everything that could _expand_ on whatever someone already was… or was supposed to be…

That train of thought seemed to be proceeding in rather vague directions.

"By the Nine Hells, boy!" A familiar voice echoed against the walls of Alaundo's tomb. Somehow. Despite there not being enough distance for echoes. "Here I am ruining what little goodwill I still have with Candlekeep's higher echelons by disappearing during my 'supervised leisure time while investigations are underway' and I find you like… like… what are you even doing!?"

"Eh?" Cyrus blinked owlishly up at the livid face of one Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun. "I'm sorry, what was the matter?" He hadn't quite caught that. He seemed to be feeling a bit light-headed.

"Oh Mystra give me strength," Khelben pled while pinching his nosebridge. Then he gave the tome he'd snatched an irritated look, which he switched back to the dwarf almost immediately. "Are you telling me that while I've been all but _put on trial for your murder_ , the one I've supposedly murdered has merely been hiding out in the keep's catacombs _reading some book!?"_ The way the man was waving that massive tome around heavily implied that the only reason he hadn't hurled it against the wall was knowing what Candlekeep's punishments for book misuse were. "You didn't even have the decency to set me up for murder intentionally!?"

That snapped some coherence to the boy's mind. "Why would I set someone up for murder?" He was genuinely confused. "Why would I frame someone for anything?"

"Oh, Mystra give me _wisdom_ and _patience_ ," the Archmage sighed gustily.

"Wait, my _murder_?" Cyrus blinked slowly. He tried to get up but his body seemed rather stiff for some reason. "Am I dead?" Was that why he was feeling so stiff?

Arunsun's soul-shade seemed to stall as if he'd been about to say or yell something but stopped himself. "You actually mean that seriously, don't you?"

Cyrus wasn't sure what happened next, only that the next he knew his head was being held straight by one hand and the old wizard was on one knee in front of where he was resting his back against the foot of Alaundo's coffin. Had he blacked out? "Boy," the man enunciated slowly and clearly. "Do you have any idea how long you've been down here?"

His body felt loose and heavy even though his head seemed like it was about to drift off at any moment. "… No." Which had never happened before. And come to think of it, hunger and thirst had seldom risen in him for long either. Father had always been very careful and considerate like that. "I'm starving," he noted aloud with some surprise, looking vaguely at Khelben's face but not really at it. "And I'm close to dying of thirst…" What an odd way to go. He looked around for the wolf pup he belatedly remembered having tentatively adopted and found him in a bad way next to him as well, tired, starving and dehydrated enough to lack the initiative to even attempt to crawl over now that he was aware of his surroundings again. How strange, weren't dogs capable of lasting for weeks on no food or water? Had he gone sick at some point?

What an objectively poor showing for a caretaker, compared to Gorion's upbringing of him.

That old and tepid murk seemed to surface in Khelben Arunsun's self-shade and even stayed this time, intermittently fading and resurging as he studied the young dwarf in front of him. He conjured a flask of water and basically fed it to him, though Cyrus soon found he at least had strength enough to hold it up himself while the man briefly saw to his new animal companion, before returning his attention to him. The old man was surprisingly careful too, Cyrus noted. Khelben Arunsun actually forwent further interrogation and spent the next ten minutes slowly feeding him conjured food so he'd recover at least a little bit of energy. How odd, given that he was still in that crossroad between wanting and not wanting to end Cyrus for whatever reason.

The young dwarf didn't immediately realize he'd said that aloud.

But the sharp look Khelben Blackstaff gave him made it clear that he had. And he was also talking now. "Boy, why… what have you _done_ to yourself?" He demanded, still supporting his head. "What have you been up to? How did you even get down here? How did you even find whatever passage got you here, let alone make it all the way to…!" Arunsun looked around in something like barely supressed incredulity and Cyrus Anwar realized the man had never been down there before. In Alaundo's final resting place that so many people had craved to see but never been allowed to even contemplate. "There are walls and traps and locked passages. There are undead and other guardians prowling these catacombs! _I_ had to get creative when teleporting to you!"

Cyrus looked past Kheben Arunsun's face again at the spectral visage of one of many spirits that he had come across while exploring the many tunnels, halls and crypts beneath the library fortress. He knew from one of them that they generally preferred to go unseen and could even shield themselves from many types of magical detection thanks to the benefits conferred from their willing pact with the Keep and the benefits of an ever-maintained magical territory.

Naturally, Cyrus could see them anyway. As he could see all dead things. And death in general.

"The dead never did anything to me," the boy said simply. "They were rather helpful actually." Like they were even now, watching over him for whatever reason. They apparently felt uncertain whether Khelben was friend or foe. Cyrus frowned at the one that had been with him since shortly after he passed the worst of the traps. He supposed the man wasn't an enemy right now and the ghosts wouldn't be able to do anything to him anyway even if he were. The gap in might was too large and the certainties clear.

The ghost behind Khelben Arunsun stared at him silently, then nodded and faded back through the wall. Set to look, Cyrus expected, for whatever other spirits were in the area and tell them not to consider the Archmage a hostile element. For now.

But still be on their guard, because might or no, Chosen of Mystra or no, Khelben Arunsun definitely was an intruder in those catacombs.

The Archmage himself didn't notice the exchange, though he seemed to sigh anyway, and some tension simply bled out of him, then the man glared at Cyrus in exasperation. "No wonder Gorion is so defensive of you. You're hopeless on your own."

Cyrus rather objected to that assessment. He was fine until… until how long ago again? "The people topside have already noticed me missing?"

"Already?" The man echoed in disbelief. "Boy… you've been gone for four days!" Wait, really? "You just up and vanished one afternoon and was never seen again! I cannot begin to describe the trouble that has caused me so you had better have a good explanation or so help me-!" The Archmage forcefully stopped himself and, after a few minutes of fighting with his temper, slowly sighed again. "Boy. Tell me everything that happened since you vanished from the sight of your Watchers."

Well alright, it wasn't like he'd ever intended to keep it a secret. The only reason he even snuck out of the keep was so that he could experience that small bit of the outside before Khelben Arunsun decided on or against finishing him for whatever reason. He hadn't even had a plan for after he was out, which was why he spent most of that first afternoon sea-gazing and then didn't mind technically returning to Candlekeep when he decided to explore the wolf cave. He'd had to trace the death lines on the face of that disguised exit in order to open the path to the catacombs – it had been designed to only open from the inside – but after that it had been fairly straightforward. The traps and wards were so effective that stepping on or through them or even approaching the magics was almost guaranteed to end him. But that made it trivial to know and avoid the trick steps and stones. As for the wards that couldn't be bypassed, well, he knew better than tearing or killing the Weave now but that still left one option. All he'd had to do was impose on the parts of the Weave coming into contact with him the same still death he'd imposed on Imoen and he could pass through them without any problem, after which magic returned to its natural state. He supposed it was a consequence of how the moment of death could result in both death and recovery, and the natural state of the wards was just that: natural.

Figuratively speaking.

The ghosts were even easier to handle since they seemed hesitant to actually engage him in any way. It only took laying eyes on one or two of them to realize why he'd never personally seen any evidence of the legends and traditions that Candlekeep's avowed and acolytes held to, stories of spirits wandering the grounds and occasionally speaking through one of the living. They'd all avoided him and his line of sight for his whole life, fearful of being forced to pass on in defiance of their decision to stay and guard Candlekeep in their own way. He politely told them that he was fairly certain he lacked the power for that, the skill, the knowledge or all three, so they shouldn't think they need to avoid their usual haunts because of him. That had confused the floating spirits, and because he hadn't actually tripped any wards that would have compelled them to embody the many skeletons and other armed corpses filling those halls and tunnels, they decided not to bother doing it of their own initiative. Whatever else Cyrus was or could do, he _was_ of Candlekeep and also literally under the active protection of the Watchers, the body recognized as the chief security force of the fortress with authority over the living and dead alike. He'd been allowed to wander as he willed and even converse with whichever spirit he wished as long as he didn't try anything on them that they didn't want.

And as long as he didn't steal anything.

Which he didn't. _Really_. He'd had no way to know that tome he'd found on the plinth next to the coffin in the other mausoleum would vanish as soon as he finished reading it. And he hadn't even picked it up, so it couldn't have been theft. By the time he managed to understand why he was being forced to read normally (albeit still very quickly) instead of taking whole pages at a glance as he normally did, he was already near the end. Then the tome vanished, leaving him with a somewhat better understanding of things in general and the nature of that manual in particular (A Tome of Understanding, if he had his lore right) but also a vanished relic and a very displeased spirit glaring at him.

The ghost – an avowed of times long past – refused to let him anywhere unsupervised afterwards, though it did grudgingly allow him to _try_ and appease him by trying to figure out how to prevent books like that from vanishing next time. The tome he found on the open-air but heavily (to him ineffectually) warded reliquary in Alaundo's tomb became his test subject for that. Cyrus suspected the ghosts kept letting him do what he wanted because of how he was apparently permitted to do anything by the wards throughout that whole level of the Candlekeep Underground.

Taking things slowly this time, he'd looked as deeply as he could at the item he was reading until he noticed the enchantment weaved into it. When he realized that the act of reading was literally pouring the magical words into his mind and leaving the words behind empty and unstable, Cyrus realized it was an issue of charge power. The tome was basically a magical item with a single charge. So all he had to do was prevent the charge from depleting, which should be easy enough to do by replacing the drained energy as it went. The Weave didn't seem to want to cooperate no matter how he tried to connect external threads to the item, so eventually he decided to just pour whatever-he-was into the book instead, which seemed to work.

It worked really well actually. Better than he expected. The book didn't vanish when he finished it but the full effects did take hold, making his muscles feel tingly as if they were changing or had been changing for the whole time he'd been reading it. The hovering spirit had seemed beyond surprised as well, and rushed off through the nearest wall, presumably to let others of its ilk know. Upon returning to the beginning to check the magical charge of the words, Cyrus found them changed so he read the tome again, then a third time. Then the content seemed to shift away from physical might and health to general lore, then logic and mnemonics (the latter sadly irrelevant to him), then various koans and sayings with multiple layers of meanings and parables, then back to physical prowess and how it may be achieved through ways other than mere exercise since there was a point beyond which mere workout did not produce any further returns. After that point text started to combine various accounts, hypotheses and lessons on all sorts of things because there was a certain level both physical, intellectual and emotion self-mastery before anyone could hope to have even a slight chance of comprehending the Metatext-

"WHAT?!" Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun burst. He'd even gasped before he regained control of himself. Then he cut off Cyrus's impending response with a cutting wave of the hand and held the Manual of Gainful Exercise (that No Longer Was) away from him, slowly laid it on the floor and withdrew his hands as if they were burned. That done, he took a small ruby set in a small golden loop out of his spell component pouch and cast a spell on himself… Cyrus couldn't comprehend its goal and he didn't feel up for trying to self-rationalize _death_ into it to try and gain insight, but the way the man proceeded to stare at the book after the casting indicated some method of discerning the effects and abilities of enchantments.

Some minutes later, by which point Cyrus felt as if he could try to stand without passing out again, the older man reached up to rub at his temples. "What is _with_ you boy?" He glared at the dwarf then. "You are out of sight for mere moments and the next time someone finds you days have passed and you've somehow created an Artefact of Doom!"

The Archmage regretted what he said almost immediately, for knowing the item's status as death-dealing object essentially allowed Cyrus to comprehend its nature as soon as he next laid eyes on it, which was at precisely that moment.

Huh. By pushing his inner whatever-he-was into the tome he'd turned a Manual of Gainful Exercise into a tome of ever-changing content cursed to ensorcel the reader into thinking of doing nothing _but_ reading it while it leeched the life from readers even as the magic worked its wonders on their mind and body. It was just the latest failure in a series of attempts to productively channel his inner whatever-it-was for the sake of feeling some sort of peace. Just the latest, stunning failure.

It was a minor consolation that it hadn't gotten around to actually draining Cyrus' own life. His weakness and fainting spell had been entirely owed to hunger and thirst accumulated over the course of days. A fair bit of Cyrus' whatever-he-was had been drained instead, making that the third time in his life when he experienced any sort of peace or even the ability to feel emotions on his own instead of reflecting off someone else. Faint feelings but _his_ all the same. He could feel it slowly replenishing, the bleak/dark/nothing, but as he stared at his palms and saw the flickers of aura, the faint glimpses of colour here and there even as they were being slowly drowned out again, he felt for the first time like there might be a reason to hope that he _wasn't_ entirely dead within.

Khelben Arunsun huffed and carefully used a conjured silk cloth to wrap the Cursed Tome of Everything before storing it in his pocket of holding. Then he stood and, after giving Cyrus one long, hard stare, finally spoke again with his usual, sternly cold mien. "Alright. Since I have already used up whatever goodwill I still had with the Candlekeep overseeing echelons by essentially escaping arrest, however unofficial, I am loathe to make things worse by teleporting back with or without you. So you're going to lead me back the way you used to get in here and then we'll use the normal way to return to the keep."

Cyrus nodded, picked up his still baby wolf and, when motioned to go ahead, led the way as ordered, indicating trap triggers where needed and leaving it to the man himself to deal with magical wards unless told otherwise. It soon became clear that the Archmage did not even need to bother with the magics since they appeared to slide over him harmlessly. A function of his status as Chosen of Mystra no doubt, the same as the wards on the Inner Rooms where the most precious texts were stored.

They traversed a series of tunnels, then a massive column-dotted hall as large as the inner Candlekeep courtyard, then another tunnel before they were near the exit. It was at that point that Khelben Blackstaff interrupted the boy's near-constant commentary on the various mechanical deathtraps they'd had to carefully skirt around that far. Ah, the man had seen the two phase spiders. Or their corpses anyhow. "Those aren't part of any defences I know or would ever have used."

Cyrus returned the man's contemplative gaze with a level one of his own. "They weren't. They tried to snatch me." And take him back to the Ethereal Plane to prepare and eat him. "I threw myself right on top of a pressure plate just as the first one phased in to sting me. It died to a hail of arrows from the corner alcoves." He indicated the appropriate spots. "The other phased in just after that so I stabbed it in the head." Khelben gave him a look of pure incredulity. "The ghosts helped. They make for excellent distractions on short notice."

The wizard sighed – he seemed to be doing that a lot lately, like Gorion – and muttered something that sounded a lot like "Too precocious by far" but didn't say anything more until they were back in the wolf cave. Once there, he made him wait until he cast a Greater Spell to Make Whole on the hidden door to remove all signs of Cyrus' and his passage. Cyrus nodded at his ghostly guide in farewell just as the final stone crumbs and chips lifted and fused back into place.

Then there was just him and the Archmage who wanted him dead inside a cave that was most definitely not part of Candlekeep or subject to its various rules and wards. An Archmage that was looking down at him, showing nothing openly but being a total chaos of murky hues and shadows inside. But for all that the man was clearly at war with himself somehow, the chances of him deciding on actually killing him were the lowest they'd ever gone since Cyrus had killed his table.

How strange.

He told him so.

To which the man reacted by allowing his shoulders to slightly sag and his eyes to soften from frigid condemnation to frustrated suspicion. "How on Toril can diviners not be screaming incoherently all around the world because of you? How did all seers miss you?"

The dwarf blinked up at the wizard. "That's an odd thing to say. Alaundo seemed to have predicted me just fine."

Khelben Blackstaff had been about to make for the exit but went rigid and turned back to face the boy with a look that was beyond piercing. "What did you just say?"

"Alaundo seems to have predicted me just fine, given the prophecy that the Endless Chant of Candlekeep goes through at least once a day."

The wizard only continued to stare at him, wide-eyed.

Cyrus frowned. "Although I suppose it is possible that the words are only referring to the others and may have missed me entirely. Though I did come across references to a prophecy about 'Gorion's Ward' in some of the more obscure texts, so I doubt that's the case."

"Gods…" the man murmured. "So you do know after all."

"I was doing a good job of wilfully avoiding the obvious conclusion before I laid eyes on those tomes in there." Cyrus laughed bitterly. He actually laughed, but he didn't have it in him to be shocked even at his own emotion. "I was born in 1348. It is no mystery what happened that year. So given everything known about me, even discounting everything everyone like you seems to know that I don't, what else could I have been? _Whose_ else, for that matter?" The small dwarf replied. Demanded, almost. " _I choose death, and it is by my hand that all that you rule Lord Bane will eventually pass to Lord Myrkul. Both of you must pay honour to me and obey my wishes, since I can destroy your kingdom, Bane, by murdering your subjects, and I can starve your kingdom, Myrkul, by staying my hand_." The Blackstaff closed his eyes as if in pain and that old and tepid thing surged within him again – a torpid ghost of something once known as compassion and intended for Gorion and not him – but the mage then opened his eyes once more and listened still while and after the dwarf boy quoted straight from the History of the Dead Three. "Of those three madmen, Bane manifested in a completely different part of the world so I couldn't have been his. And while it's not completely impossible that Myrkul might have sown his oats in the short time before Midnight slew him, his whereabouts did not intersect with those of my mother either. Besides, while I was still too young to remember all the details of my infancy clearly, I have always known and comprehended _death_ , especially my own. I well remember the woman that took me from my slain mother as well as the symbol on the pendant she wore about her neck while she was chanting to her god and holding sacrificial athames just inches above my eyes." Khelben Arunsun had clenched his fists and gone utterly still but still didn't interrupt. "Even lacking that memory, the nature that seems determined to affect everything I touch with any sort of active _intent_ is quite specific in its focus on _inflicting_ death and, more than that, the _moment_ of death."

Yet still the man didn't reconsider his decision not to kill him, even as his belief that the world would be better off with Cyrus dead seemed to only grow in strength.

And when he spoke again, he surprised Cyrus by asking about throwaway word that was effectively the most innocuous thing in everything the boy had just said. "You called them madmen." His eyes seemed to look for something, or perhaps nothing specific at all. "Why?"

The boy frowned and actually glared up with distaste painted clear on him. "And what else should I call them? Evil?" He wondered if ever there would be a time when he could feel, however briefly, and experience emotions that were at least in some way wholesome. It never seemed meant to be. "Evil is to claim dominion over the dead and immediately take steps to ensure that you can inflict as much torment as possible on the souls that arrive in your domain. For any and all slights, however minor. Evil is to thrive on fear, hatred and tyranny even before the portfolio taken from a god twisted you into one of the most dreaded and _loathed_ of all beings in the Planes." Cyrus felt. He felt and it was called _contempt_. "Evil is to run around shapeshifting into every possible race big and small and take women by force to spread your divine essence in the hopes of reviving later." Because his sight had long ago revealed the mysteries of flesh to him. More than one female seeker had come to Candlekeep that had in the past barely escaped murder after being raped as prelude or even method of murder. "Evil is to actively seek out women already bonded to others just to inflict that extra pain, on them and their loved ones alike. Evil is to do all of that even though there would have been plenty of females of _all_ those races that would have given themselves willingly." His clenched hands were shaking for the young boy felt disgust and everything else he hadn't felt at those realities in the past because back then he could feel nothing at all. "Evil is claiming the portfolio of _death_ from an ancient power clearly old enough to know better than you and immediately decide that all death is and should be synonymous to _murder_. Even though suffering has _nothing_ to do with the moment of death! People don't fear death, they never fear death, they're afraid or what comes before and what comes after! Death is painless. Death is _peaceful…_ " His voice cracked with the last word but he took a deep breath, then another, then looked at the human again, or whatever he was under that disguise he had on. "Evil is to seek to kill and maim and inflict suffering even when there is no gain worth that death and pain. Evil is to inflict pain and suffering for their own sake! Evil is to inflict suffering on all, even one's _self_ , and feel nothing but _relish_. Evil, evil, _evil_ …" Cyrus nearly _spat_ that word and started to realize he'd gone on a rant but didn't feel like stopping before he was ready, and this time it wasn't because he didn't feel much of anything. "Evil is to be unwholesome... To have discarded or to simply _lack_ something inside. A lack that makes you feel the drive to steal what you lack from others, or enough spite to begrudge them what you no longer have. Tell me how all or any of that could be called anything other than madness!"

Khelben Arunsun gazed down at him, hand clenched on the Blackstaff at his side but doing and speaking nothing at all. Not for nearly five minutes. Cyrus would probably have returned that stare if the wolf pup in his arms hadn't started to fuss, his strength finally returning after being neglected for so long.

Of everything, that thought brought Cyrus back to the present and he gave the animal a sad gaze. How long would he be able to feel the way he did now, he wondered? Would he get another two months? Would he get more? Less? Barely any time at all? Would it be enough for his luck to swing to the point where he might find himself in a situation that would make him experience that mystery called joy?

Would these feelings be revealed as fake and he revert back to that state when he only felt possessiveness and _hatred_ again?

The many readings of the Tome of Understanding and the Cursed Tome of Everything seemed to finally settle into a fully coherent part of his mind and the boy realized that he'd just made the whole situation about him again. He was as self-absorbed as they came.

How pitiable. "And to think I called your mother a terrible parent…" He murmured while holding the pup in front of his face to look at the whole of him. "Just a few days and I've already outdone her wilful abandonment with life-endangering incompetence." The pup produced a confused whine and licked his nose.

Something flickered inside his chest and he thought it might be affection. The feeling disappeared as soon as he thought about it. "Is this trust you're showing me, little one? Or pity?" The wolf cub tilted his head and whined again. "Or is it neither and you're just behaving yourself because you feel intimidated in the presence of someone with any amount of power?"

"If he does then that means he at least has some measure of sense, which makes one of you," the human finally broke his silence, drawing Cyrus' attention to him once again. "Though I suppose I may have been doing you a disservice in regards to that after all, this whole time…" But the man didn't apologise. Cyrus didn't expect him to, not when the mage still thought the world would be better off with him dead. "You seem far more animated than you were during our prior discussion. Care to explain why? Or was that an act as I believed it to be?"

Cyrus allowed the wolf down to exercise and didn't bother looking up at the man again immediately. "If it was an act then I have been using it all my life." All that magical reading seemed to have given him an inclination for speech rather more flowery and metaphor-riddled than normal. He wondered if it would last or if he'd go back to his stale, bleak/dark/nothing normal self after this internal reprieve ended. "The answer is not that complicated. The dead darkness inside me was depleted somewhat during the past few days and not all of it could return from the tome I altered. It seems to be self-replenishing and self-propagating to an extent, but that tends to happen more slowly after part of it has actually been irrecoverably spent." He glanced down at the fleeting gossamer of emotion that flickered where his aura would be. A reflection, perhaps, of his faint desire to stroke his new pet? To want physical contact rather than just submitting to it from Father because that was expected? The bleak/dark/nothing still nearly covered it up along with everything else. "To think that this is supposed to qualify as divinity." He looked away from his nearly-not-there soul-light and at the wolf pup that was now cautiously sniffing the hem of Khelben Arunsun's robes. Such a quick rebound in comparison… "What an unhappy power."

Khelben Blackstaff almost managed to stay impassive, but instead he finally seemed to decide there was no point to trying to pretend he was feeling or thinking anything other than what he really was. He shook his head and looked at Cyrus with a contemplative sort of melancholy that even came through in his voice. "So as redundant as it may seem to be asking this, you do not feel the urge to go around… exercising your nature?"

The boy's mouth turned in distaste, then twisted into the first smirk he'd ever produced as he looked at his hands again. "The darkness in me may be mad. But _I'm_ not."

"And if I were to tell you that exercising it would make you powerful? More and more powerful until you could do anything you wanted?"

A young dwarf boy stared at the Archmage with something like bemusement. "Is this the part where you subject me to a secret character test shaped as a temptation designed specifically for my supposed fatal flaw?" He frowned. "Would my answer even be valid considering that I'm fully aware of the supposed trick?"

"I would hear it anyway. At this point I think I can manage believing your father's words that you have never said a lie in your life." The man fully forwent his cold countenance for the first time in Cyrus' presence. "You do not seem to believe lies carry any real power."

Cyrus wondered if that really was self-doubt that fleetingly coursed over the man's self-shade.

But the question was more important. Or its answer. "What is power? Maybe that should be my answer. It would make as little sense as anything else can in this world where madness is an enforced part of reality by the whim of some reclusive overdeity." Right then and there, Cyrus Anwar felt confident enough to assume that there would come, in the future, a situation when the only thing he would feel would be the desire to walk up to Ao and punch him in the face. "Gorion has power but he hasn't used any since the death of my mother, save for what he needed to save my life." It was the first time ever he thought of his life being saved instead of the way Gorion murdered everyone involved. "Tethtoril is the mightiest being in Candlekeep other than you right now, but he's happiest when everything runs smoothly and he does not need to use his power at all. He's more than content advising whoever is forceful enough to occupy the position of Tome Keeper at any given time." He looked at the Archmage and saw him looking nearly as spellbound as he sounded when he asked him about justice. "I can't see any death on him, did you know? Only the natural one that will come from aging. Wherever death lines would be are instead Mystra's star, Oghma's shadowy floating harp and even Deneir's holy symbol of the candle on the eye. He's actively protected by three gods and doesn't even know it. He is probably the only person in the world that has absolutely _nothing_ to fear from me. Or from anyone." His thoughts turned to the Keeper of the Tomes then. "Of all the other people with power in Candlekeep, Ulraunt is the only one unhappy with the lack of opportunities to actively exercise it. That he already has the highest authority in the Keep seems to be insufficient for him and, well…" He shrugged and made sure to meet the mage's sight. "Even if there weren't others here like the Gatewarden, the Watchers and the Great Readers, Ulraunt's mentality would have been rendered irrelevant as soon as you came." The boy looked at the man then, and beyond him to the grey/dark/clotted and the lack of that tepid ghost of compassion that had emerged earlier for Gorion but failed to actually manifest for him. "When I look at you, I think that maybe it's not Bhaal's taint that's the issue after all, or not the only one at least."

"And what," The wizard asked slowly, "do you mean to imply by that?"

"You've got more power than anyone I've ever seen," he said simply, then blinked to shift his sight from the shade-self to the man's ancient black eyes. "But you're not happy at all. You haven't been for a long, long time."

The ancient mage stared down at the nine-year-old boy and, for the first time, truly did not know how to think or even feel. "From the mouth of babes…" Khelben Arunsun slowly shook his head and almost failed to internally talk himself into asking that one, last thing. "Is that really all you want, then? To be happy? After everything you've said, after everything _I've_ said and done, wanted to do, is that really all you feel?"

"What I feel…" Only Father usually asked him that. How strange and ironic. How _unfair_ that he wasn't there to hear this most meaningful answer. "I _feel_ that it's a shame that Father's soul hasn't glowed even a fraction like Imoen's since before we even came to the fortress. I _feel_ that it is unfair that the shining light that he would have deserved as an offspring somehow ended up a street urchin that Winthrop only accidentally came upon. I _feel_ that my inability to shine the same way is unfortunate and unfair. I feel that it is unwholesome that I can possibly look upon Father's soul as it is now, dim and desperate, and feel _nothing_. I feel _lightless_ and _nothing_ when I am too far away from his or Imoen's soul light or any other soul light, and even when in their presence I feel only echoes of what they feel themselves. I feel that it is unfair that I cannot feel any of that, that my soul will only ever be this dark, colorless, _dead thing_. I _feel_ …" His hands were faintly shaking and he barely remembered breaking eye contact with the man so he could stare at them instead. "I feel _terrified_ that soon this reprieve will end, the darkness will return to what it has ever been and I will be back to feeling absolutely nothing of anything of my own." His hands curled into fists and he felt like he could pound on the walls of the cave until they bled.

But of course he did nothing of that. Instead, he took a deep breath and released it, then did it again and, once his heart stopped pounding, he slowly raised his eyes to the only other living person there. And he already felt himself beginning to once again feel _nothing_ even as the small wolf pup rubbed against his ankles in total defiance of the terror his mother and siblings had felt when confronted with him. There was only him and the ancient man that had asked him Father's question, the question to which he could finally give an accurate answer. "I believe what I feel is called envy."

And finally, finally though Cyrus had not realized he was waiting or even hoping for it, that torpor of a ghost of compassion breached the surface of the man's soul and it was all meant for _him_.

Khelben Arunsun did not speak any further to him, save for what was needed to get them both on their way. Cyrus did not really pay much attention to his surroundings after that. Not on the long way back to the gates, not while the news of his reappearance spread like a ripple of relief and annoyance, not even while Gorion and Khelben Arunsun had a silent glare match or during those long minutes when Gorion had Amanather, Larth and even Tethtoril check mundanely and magically to make sure he was really his son Cyrus and not some golem or derivative method the Archmage of Waterdeep might have come up with. Khelben Arunsun had been insulted and made no secret of it, but Gorion pushed everything through regardless, and then asked Hull to double-check through whatever questions he could think of.

Gorion took him away immediately afterwards, though he was not quick enough to avoid Imoen somehow emerging from somewhere and slamming into Cyrus almost hard enough to knock him over, babbling about how scared she'd been, how glad she was he was okay, how she never wanted him to leave again and how sorry she was that she'd been the cause of it because she'd pestered Hull into admitting it and what could she do to make it up to him?

Cyrus had told her, truthfully, that he didn't know and that he'll get back to her on that at a later date.

Gorion didn't try to restrict him or ground him or do anything else after the incident, but he never was far away either. He'd always sit next to him or within arm's reach during lessons or evenings in the Grove. And through it all his soul light shone bright for the first time in years, with relief and happiness and what may have been love. Cyrus couldn't really tell, not even then. He just knew it was enough to almost entirely outshine the stark terror that had never entirely left his Father even after they were reunited.

A couple of days later, Tethtoril called him and Gorion to the inner antechamber where Cyrus technically wasn't allowed, since only Great Readers like Gorion or those above had permission for it. Ulraunt was also there, along with Khelben Arunsun, to inform Cyrus that his Cursed Tome of Everything (The name is the Universal Tome of Self-Sacrifice, boy!) could actually be used relatively safely if someone always watched over whoever read it and rationed the time. Given that it was a rule of Candlekeep to have a monk always watch over other readers (seekers especially), that would be easy enough to do. More importantly, though, was that the tome could accurately gauge the physical, magically and mental state and development of the reader and tailor its content to best suit them. It was a bizarre duality that its intended effect was outright divine (Gorion _and_ Ulraunt had glared at Tethtoril at saying that, oddly) and entirely removed from the drawback that the (though no one ever said it aloud) essence of Bhaal (which neither Khelben nor Cyrus himself had brought up with Gorion for as yet unclear reasons) had needlessly imposed on the item. Provided a reader was of high enough wisdom, might and intelligence, the book may even take on the content of the Metatext itself someday, Tethtoril said reverently.

The book would naturally be sealed in the deepest and best-warded inner chamber of course, but they'd called Gorion and Cyrus there to tell them that the worth of the item was such that it had bought the boy the right to live in the Fortress forever or leave Candlekeep and return at any time in the future, however many times he wanted, without having to provide an entrance fee ever again. They would even waive the penalties for theft since it had been Khelben Arunsun that had actually removed it from the crypts in defiance of the young dwarf's promise to the spirits there.

Ulraunt had, of course, glared at Cyrus throughout that whole meeting but that was nothing new.

The next day Khelben Arunsun left after exchanging some strained words with Gorion that Cyrus had not been close enough to hear.

But the Archmage returned four weeks later, the minimum allotted time before any supplicant was allowed to return at all, and he provided the entrance fee – a rare text the Library did not yet have – so none could have kept him away even if they wanted to – which they didn't and wouldn't, given who and what he was.

Cyrus didn't inquire as to the reason why he'd come back, but he found out anyway that very evening when the ancient man came and sat next to him on the bench in the Grove where he was waiting for his father to join him after returning the latest texts they'd been studying.

The man did not greet him or otherwise delay broaching the reason he'd approached him. And it wasn't all due to how they both knew Gorion would _not_ be pleased to find the Archmage near his son for whatever reason, not that soon. "You told me that you never feel peace or anything else as long as enough of the essence in you is not invested or otherwise extant outside your being."

"Yes."

"Like you invested in that tome, however accidentally."

"Yes."

"So, in theory… if you were to carry on your person enough items enchanted to constantly act as a drain on the Bhaal essence, by simple virtue of possessing enchantments 'flawed' enough to require constant fuelling, you could actually live a semblance of life."

"I believe so."

Gorion emerged from the central keep and, upon seeing the both of them there, quickly switched from his normal gait to a barely-qualified stride.

"Tell me, boy, how would you like to learn enchanting?"

Cyrus had long passed the point where he could feel anything at all, but he knew he would be surprised if he could. "I would have to learn magic first." Gorion hadn't said whether or not he would, and he'd have probably consented if Cyrus but asked but that was the problem: Cyrus never asked for anything.

And that was when Khelben Blackstaff finally looked at him. His eyes were searching and his soul as grey/dark/clotted as ever, but his compassion seemed a bit less tepid and his mask a bit less rigid. "Then we'll have to start teaching you magic as soon as possible."

Perhaps his Father was too close to the problem. Perhaps Cyrus was as well. Those were as good as any answers for why the Archmage would offer that. Or offer anything at all.

And even as Gorion finally reached them and drew the mage of Waterdeep into one of those borderline hostile, stilted talks all of their conversations were like nowadays, Cyrus Anwar realized he finally knew what favour to demand from Imoen in reparation for being the source of the chain of events that resulted in that entire mess. Not that Cyrus agreed with that, necessarily, but she seemed to and Hull also seemed to and those two never agreed on anything.

And Cyrus kind of did think that it would do Imoen good if she finally learned her letters and maybe even studied some cultural lore and other various things from the myriad of books that Candlekeep was all about.

So he tracked her down the next day and told her he knew what she could do for him now.

Needless to say, Imoen had totally forgotten about her promise or most everything pertaining to that mess of over two weeks prior. But she was intelligent and quick-minded and had a pretty good ability to recall things herself. And so she remembered soon enough and said ok, hit me.

And that was how Cyrus Anwar accidentally turned Imoen the Magnificent into a bard.

Though how she eventually went from writing a book titled "1001 Uses for Prestidigitation" to authoring a massive tome called "Calimshan Nights," a story about a Pasha's wife with a penchant for telling tales by halves each night, he was still trying to puzzle out ten years later.

"-. .-"

The Grove was Candlekeep's expansive network of gardens taking up much of the inner courtyard. Though much of it was taken up by trees of various species and age, it also boasted several natural springs that cascaded down over formations of rocks. The same water was guided among garden plots and to fill various pools. The Grove was actually cut off from easy access from both the Court of Air (the buffer zone around the central towers of the monks) and the Hearth and House of Rest (which that deliberate drop of standard civilization known as Winthrop's Inn was part of). A wall had been built by the Avowed sometime in the past to ward against thefts of the herbs planted there, but everyone from scribe upwards could walk the gardens at their leisure.

Cyrus technically fell outside any and all classification since he was neither a member of the Avowed nor technically a "seeker," the title given to supplicants that requested and were granted access to the Keep's resources after they've provided a suitable entry fee, and even then they were only allowed to stay in the keep for 10 days. But even if Gorion hadn't effectively browbeaten Ulraunt into accepting him as a guest indefinitely, Cyrus did have that eternal membership and residence privilege he got for the Cursed Tome of Everything (no matter what else Ulraunt insisted on it being called). And he'd done a fair bit of gardening and leaf sweeping there since his and his father's arrival so he could claim to know the Grove better than most everyone else there, save maybe the Watchers themselves.

He found Gorion sitting on a bench by the waterfall closest to the middle of the Grove. In addition to tying his white-grey hair at the back, the man had put on that old set of archmagi robes he had used when storming the Bhaalite temple to rescue him as a baby. The staff resting against his shoulder was different though. Rather than the wooden shaft crowned by a holy symbol and surrounded by wicked barbs of metal – Heretic's Bane – the man had instead one made of white ash and inlaid with silver runes. Even without his second sight that told him the item was as close to an antithesis of death as most things ever could be, Cyrus knew enough of lore to recognize it as a Staff of Healing.

It only served to remind him of his misgivings. "I still say you should remain here at the Keep."

"You usually don't say anything at all unless prompted, claiming when prodded that you don't care enough to speak up on most things because you generally don't feel much of anything." Cyrus' father looked away from the clear water and aimed a warm smile his way. "And then you say things like that and I wonder how you could possibly believe yourself incapable of hope and affection for others."

As with most other attempts to alleviate the emotionally-stunting and murder-premeditating effect of the Bhaal taint, the "get a life via failing enchanting forever" plan had only achieved minor results. Which meant that these days Cyrus did manage to feel most emotions but only in minute and fleeting amounts, save for isolated incidents like that time when he told his two (at the time still only grudgingly cooperative) teachers in magic to teach him the most useless and needlessly power-intensive spells in their vast repertories.

Compared to the ridiculous amount of items big and small that he'd bestowed enchantments on over the years, with traits ranging from murderously bizarre to bizarrely murderous and everything in between, barely upgrading from "unfeeling" to "stoic" qualified as a lacklustre result at best for what was effectively the main objective. Admittedly, none of those items were safe to use for most people, including him since keeping any of them on his person negated the alleviating effect on his psyche, but quantity was a quality of its own. And there was a _lot_ of quantity since he had to produce at least one… something a week.

He'd grown intimately familiar with the Tower of Exaltation as a result, as well as the magically-inclined monks that frequented it. Not a few of whom had inquired into and even participated in his various experiments over the years or had him participate in theirs, reacting with everything from bemused horror to delighted fascination at the increasingly strange and suspiciously specific ways in which his items always sought to indiscriminately kill everyone and everything if mishandled. With mishandled meaning "picking it up" with annoying regularity.

Because yes, he could feel annoyed now.

The Spork of Flaying had never seen the light of day again and with luck it never will.

It was Imoen's fault for coming up with the idea of spork to begin with. Synergistic benefits of tool merger, she said. Ha!

Though the young dwarf suspected that annoyance was not an entirely appropriate emotional response to Gorion's insistence to leave Candlekeep with him. Whoever had sent those letters to his Father so abruptly and gave no sort of grace period before they had to take their departure deserved a serious kick to the shin. "The odds of your death increased to near certainty this morning the moment you decided we both would leave."

"And the odds of yours?"

Cyrus didn't answer. They both knew the odds of _his_ death would decrease if Gorion left with him. Of course they'd be better if neither of them left at all but that came in exchange to a whole bunch of other people being killed instead, including Phylida, Dreppin, Fuller and Hull. And Gorion's death would be just as certain as if they both left as opposed to his practically guaranteed survival if he just let Cyrus leave alone, something which the old man would not hear a word of.

Both Cyrus and Gorion knew better than to take for granted the accuracy of all those specific bits of precognition but one fact was nevertheless clear.

Death was coming for them both. Them both _specifically_.

He wondered if he should hate how his ability to know death and the _coming_ of death had evolved over the years.

The old man pulled himself to stand and leaned forward on his staff, smiling down at the 20-year-old dwarf wistfully. "This is the first time in your life that you refused to answer a direct question." He set off at a quick stride that Cyrus automatically fell in step with. "Would that I could attribute it to the rebelliousness of youth rather than misaimed martyrdom."

" _I'm_ not the martyr here," Cyrus grunted, fiddling with the plain brass clasp securing most of his beard in one chest-long braid. Then he stopped. He barely ever got any nervous ticks. He clasped his hands behind his back.

"Your life for mine, then?" Gorion murmured with a smile in his voice.

"You know that's not what I mean." And it wasn't. "There's a better than null chance that death will miss me if I leave alone. But if you come, yours is certain either way."

"But your better than null chance will improve if I come," Gorion said, seeing through him as usual. It was moments like this that he wondered if maybe he should reconsider lies and their worth.

But then he always remembered the last spell he had Khelben Arunsun teach him and what came out of the associated conversation and everything leading to it and dismissed the thought. This time was no exception.

Neither of them said anything else until they reached the gates. They were just in time to mingle with the latest batch of travellers setting up to leave the Keep, their allotted 10 days having expired. After this and until early evening (at which point they would be shut until dawn the next day) the gates would be dedicated exclusively to the admittance or rejection of the supplicants gathered outside. And scattered further inland and camped on the side of the Lion's Way Road for miles, up to a day's journey on foot.

There were always _many_ people coming to Candlekeep and special privacy, travel and camping rules had had to be devised as a result.

Thaerabho and Tethtoril were near Hull's post again to see them off, giving them one encouraging smile each. Naturally, all three men had no issue interpreting Gorion's peacefully resigned expression and Cyrus' silently frustrated demeanor. Being aware of just how similar to pulling teeth it was to get the dwarf to engage in any open emotional displays whatsoever the sight only served to alarm both older men.

All _three_ men, actually. "Fuck," Hull muttered from the side, grip going taut on his polearm.

Neither of the venerable old monks disagreed. "More ill news then…" Thaerabho murmured, leaning forward to talk to Gorion, mindful of the multitude of seekers that were clustered in groups nearby, waiting for the gates to open and be ushered out. Though the grey-haired, burly man looked at _Cyrus_ in the eye while he did so. "I take it that besides those two assassins something has somehow come up that made worse whatever it is that had you two suddenly decide to leave the Keep this morning?"

"Assassins?" Gorion muttered, looking down at his son questioningly.

Cyrus ignored him for the first time. "Nothing new has come up," the dwarf answered for his Father, switching from ignoring him to giving said human the first glare he'd ever sent him. There seemed to be a lot of firsts that day. "It's more like certain things and _decisions_ refuse to change."

"Ah," both the Gatewarden and the First Reader gravely uttered at the same time. Cyrus did not find that entirely unexpected. It _was_ a day of firsts, as he'd already noted just then.

What he did _not_ expect was for Thaerabho to reach up and unfasten the chest harness holding his two-handed sword strapped to his back. Or for the man to hold it out for the young dwarf to take. "If I give you this…" Hazel eyes made sure to meet his black ones and transmit complete, serious earnestness as two inches of blade were pulled from the scabbard. "Will the odds improve?"

The young dwarf stared at the weapon, stunned by the sheer _flood_ of years that bloomed in his mind at mere sight of it. It was long since he was still ignorant of just how intimate an act it was for someone aware of what he could do to gift him with a weapon privy to their most meaningful and defining of trials.

"Yes…" Cyrus breathed, arrested by the history that he could already see in that powerful blade even without touching it. Thaerabho hadn't had it with him ever before in Cyrus' recollection, but now that he had it in his sights he knew it for the one that the man had used throughout nearly his entire career before settling in Candlekeep. "Yes… the odds most definitely would change." Not the _certainty_ that hung over Gorion like a noose but perhaps if he assimilated the accumulated years of use and mastery…

Thaerabho's smile returned. It seemed to transform his whole face and his soul shone with hopeful viciousness from within. "Then it's yours until you resolve whatever it is that needs resolving." He waited until Cyrus took hold of the sheathe and laid hand over his. "And I do mean that," he said seriously. "I expect you to come back and return this to me one day." He looked from him to Gorion. "Both of you, if you have any sort of sense."

Finally, Father's countenance slipped. "Thaerabho…" he breathed, looking between him, the greatsword, Cyrus and the man again. "That's-"

"Sightless." The dwarf uttered as the totality of the sword's capabilities became clear to his awareness. "Impervious, keen, spellstealing adamantine blade with third-level enhancement," he listed lowly to avoid being overheard. Though what struck him most was the sheer myriad of battles that the man had wielded it in, and the variety of enemies – spellcasters especially – it had felled. Cyrus looked at the sword-scarred warrior and he thought he might actually feel a ghost of awe. "Sightless. Because justice may be blind, but you're not."

The man's smile widened. "I used to be, figuratively speaking, long ago." His mood seemed to sober again. "But if anything, you have the opposite problem if it can even be called a problem." He straightened in his full-plate armour that he only wore when guarding the gate as opposed to his normal green and brown robes. He gave Cyrus' longsword, the only weapon in the immediately available stock that didn't seem on the verge of falling apart, and his splint mail a dubious look. "If only there was time to get you some better… well, everything." He handed Gorion a Rod of Absorption – even though his Father already had one – then straightened and looked about to send them on their way, but remembered one last thing to ask the young dwarf about to leave. "Will you be able to… duplicate whatever you did with Dinodas' sword while you walk?"

The boy nodded, once again looking at the hilt. The sword even had an empty eye engraved on the pommel. "Yes. Yes I dare say I will." It would likely take hours upon hours but when he was done he would be several times the warrior he was now. Which was saying something, given that a similar improvement had been bestowed upon him years ago when Hull had spirited him to the cellars and given him Jondalar's sword to "do his thing."

By the time they exited through the Candlekeep gates – large, arched things the height of three men and made from spell-shrouded vertical bars of unknown, lightning-repelling black metal – the dwarf was already immersed in the weapon's history almost completely, trusting his feet to walk by themselves wherever his Father led. He was barely cognizant of even the tight grip he had on the top side of the scabbard, unwilling as he was to leave Sightless out of his, well, sight. Even to mount it on his back where it should be. By the time they were nearly out of view of the gates and getting ready to split from the larger group and into the woods – better to avoid whoever was after them that would hopefully look for them first among the other departing pilgrims – his mind had sunk into the weapon's past entirely.

Which was why it was so surprising that the sound of music reached him even there.

He emerged from the trance bewildered and on the verge of tripping on his own feet but he easily regained his balance and turned to look back at the gates. The gates from where the faint sound of drums had reached him, and from where strings of a lute at once melded with the slow, soulful notes of a fiddle.

There on top of the Candlekeep gates, Imoen the Magnificent let go of the fiddle bow – it went on sliding across the strings of the fiddle on the parapet all on its own – and brought the flute to her lips, her eyes meeting his.

Soulful music became a haunting tune delivered seemingly by an entire band of minstrels and the background noise and images of a sword's bloody past quieted and vanished utterly.

The first of the latest supplicants had already begun to make their way to the gate but even they stopped in their tracks to listen and watch. Imoen had forgone robes entirely, as usual, favouring instead dark leathers and a pink cloak. She moved in the late morning's light as if nobody mattered but herself and her music. Which was generally the point of all her performances but that never seemed to bother anyone and this time was no exception. She glided from note to note, danced almost, as her flute shaped the air, as drums steadily beat behind her, as her lute and and fiddle played their parts on their own, working in concert by the will of her magic. It was a song Imoen must have composed just that morning, assuming she wasn't spontaneously putting it together right then and there. Several distinct tunes known each as heroes moulded together in [a theme known as Order](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k9fPBM-rPo).

It ended after barely two minutes, but by then Cyrus had settled back into his own mind completely and she no doubt had no idea what effect her music had on him, as always. Back when she'd been bedridden she'd begged him to play her some instruments – _You can remember anything, you can do it!_ – and he had done as bid, but his tunes always turned out as dead as he'd ever been within despite never hitting a false note unless the person he was mimicking had done it to begin with.

Music had always been the one thing he'd never even begun to _emulate_ , even though he could _imitate_ minstrels just fine.

Looking back, that might have been part of the reason she decided to take up instruments herself. She wanted proper, lively music and she realized he'd never be able to give her that.

Or maybe he was just being self-absorbed again and he should try not to slip back into that mindset.

Cyrus Anwar shook himself out of his fugue and raised eyes back to the girl – woman now – on the Candlekeep Gatehouse, just as her eyes met his again.

And the odds of her death and her _handing_ death to all and sundry suddenly jumped dramatically from one moment to the next.

Then she was off, her instruments floating into her grasp or to hang from the harness she had on, and her form disappeared behind the parapets leaving him alone with just his martyr of a father and his thoughts that effectively revolved around the same, damn thing.

Hells dammit, not another one!

Gorion ushered him away and Cyrus followed silently contemplative on the outside but an incensed, fuming mass of exasperation on the inside. An incensed, fuming mass of exasperation barely held in check by active delving into a sword's murderous history and the metamagical transmutation of collected twigs, pebbles and random bits and pieces of debris as they travelled amongst trees.

_Persistent magic stone, Persistent magic weapon._

He'd never bothered learning archery beyond the basics because arrows never moved as fast or as far or as accurately as he could throw things.

_Persistent magic stone, Persistent magic weapon._

Rinse and repeat for as long as he still had room in his pockets.

_Persistent magic stone, Persistent magic weapon._

The Bhaal taint was always more than willing to cooperate when all he was doing with it was engaging in that charming activity known as premeditated murder.

Death found them that very night, just as they were passing out of the woods and into the circle of stones north of the Lion's Way Road waypoint closest to Candlekeep.

_Silent Image to make Sightless as unseen as the night around the both of them. Prestidigitation to write very tiny messages on the surface of Gorion’s eye – Three men, one woman, two ogres. Already active pre-cast clerical magic._

Pause and double-check the burning, spiteful thing that was once a light-filled soul.

 _Personal grudge_.

“Hold," Gorion spoke out, stopping and giving no indication of readied wand and spell trigger. “We are in an ambush. Prepare yourself.”

Armor of black metal, spikes and a helmet like a looming maw of some great monster. It probably looked ridiculous in the daylight but that didn’t matter just then. Not much did after Cyrus laid direct eyes on his and his father’s would-be murderer and knew what it was like to lay eyes on someone whose every action for more than a decade had been meant for the exact, same thing the bleak/dark/nothing always tried to drive him to. Actions so steeped in all other actions of their past and intended for the future that they all may as well have been pursued for the same goal themselves, all the way back to their birth.

And so Cyrus Anwar knew what it was like to lay eyes upon a person and know about them absolutely everything.

Sarevok Anchev.

He dismissed Cyrus entirely.

How foolish.

"You are perceptive for an old man." Truth. "Hand over your ward and no one will be hurt." Lie. "If you resist it shall be a waste of your life." Half-truth. He was going to try to kill him anyway. But for all that he claimed, Cyrus was actually a secondary target even if pride tried to persuade him otherwise.

The moment loomed briefly and Cyrus Anwar knew that there would be plenty of better choices that he could make than to speak up, other paths he could take in order to survive.

Instead he recalled the feel of older and stronger while athames hovered above his eyes, older and stronger but really-less-than-him-overall, albeit much more refined now, and stepped forward. "Hello, older brother." Eyes glowing with simmering Bhaal-taint snapped in his direction. "Fancy meeting you again."


	4. Uncompromising

Learning from Khelben Arunsun was a strange arrangement, Cyrus supposed. Since the man had erred on the side of caution and chosen not to try and demand any special dispensations from the Candlekeep authority figures, he could only teach Cyrus for 10 days at a time after which he would have to leave and stay away for at least one month just like everyone else. The young dwarf reasoned he could have been suspicious of it all, insofar as someone lacking in feeling could be suspicious about anything. Healing the Weave and tracking Cyrus down before he accidentally killed himself via the Cursed Tome of Everything should have earned the man more goodwill than he'd lost during those few days. On the other hand, the man had business all over Faerun as well as the more domestic duties of his home in Waterdeep even if his wife handled the training of most his apprentices nowadays, so it wasn't like the Archmage didn't need the enforced leaves of absence anyway.

Blackstaff had come up with a very specific methodology for teaching Cyrus. One reason was that he was more often away than available so the bulk of actual magical training really came from Gorion. Father started out fairly optimistic and even slightly excited with the idea of finally introducing his son to the matters of magic, if a bit conflicted due to the age-old distrust that Dwarves had towards the arcane, as well as the rather explosive short history that Cyrus had had with the Weave. For once he didn't see his optimism crash and burn, as Cyrus' intellectual ability was very well suited for magic and it became quickly clear that he wasn't a Wild Mage either, despite his ability to cause such effects. The reason the young dwarf only advanced at an impressive pace rather than ludicrously quickly – especially since given a minute or so he could just focus on watching the weave and memorise the pattern of the spells Gorion demonstrated, allowing him to later instantly or at least wordlessly and non-somatically cast them by forming the pattern from memory if he studied them enough times – was due to focusing on the real objective of the entire learning plan.

That was to say, when Khelben dropped by he worked almost exclusively on item enchantment with him. Once he had Cyrus thoroughly versed in the most basic of enchantment recipes and methodologies, he challenged him to try and discover new combinations of cantrips, spells and material components, and to use his inner essence to brute-force those that didn't want to work as long as he did it under supervision. Given the tendency of the Bhaal taint to affect things whether Cyrus wanted it to or not, even invalid or outright nonsensical ideas like trying to enchant a hazelnut with the Mending cantrip resulted in something. That said something was along the lines of a curse of decay applied to the plot of soil the hazelnut was planted in was unfortunate to be sure, but ultimately worked as Cyrus had theorized and eased his inner boiling pot for all life and reason into a slightly calmer simmer, if only temporarily. The health-hazardous (or worse) "inventions" started piling up fairly quickly after that, since the same procedures had diminishing returns due to the taint apparently getting better at self-propagation and recovery as well with each repetition, but they were able to reach a pattern of sorts. Cyrus never reached the point where he could be said to have real empathy and the most meaningful emotions like love still eluded him, but at least he could sense more than echoes most of the time after the first few months.

In-between the latest and next upcoming death-dealing not-necessarily-inanimate object, Khelben Arunsun taught Cyrus magic theory and spells from those schools that Gorion wouldn't or couldn't fully guide him through on account of being a specialist abjurer himself ( _among other issues but those aren't relevant right now_ ). So transmutation, illusion, enchantment and conjuration all came from the Archmage of Waterdeep. Studies in those schools progressed even more slowly, if that term even applied to him, due to Arunsun demanding that his student try out at least ten different essence-supplemented enchantment ideas with each new cantrip, spell or symbol, as well as manage to create at least one essence-supplemented enchanted item that did not cause more harm than good. That last demand took more time than everything else combined and never quite worked out properly, but it was the sole reason the Bhaal taint's own replenishing and adaption rate didn't outpace the diminishment of its hold on him.

There were some incidents during the first year involving careless or curious seekers or even monks that made the mistake of playing around with some of the not-yet-locked-up items he filled with murder essence, but fortunately no one died. Some of the people under "influence" did get sentenced to gather shellfish for a month or so due to damage they did to this or that book "while acting under influence" but at least no one got de-handed.

Gorion had made sure to tell his son, repeatedly, that it was not his fault some people had less sense than curiosity but maybe they should procure a better lockbox of some sort before letting things pile up again? Khelben had not reacted at all on the outside – he never exhibited anything besides a stern countenance devoid of praise and insult alike – but his self-shade had gradually been turning from grey/dark/clotted into something Cyrus had no frame of reference for, and it looked in that moment that perhaps he would have laughed if not for the inertia of having lived centuries almost never laughing at all.

But the next time he dropped by the Archmage brought along the best chest he could make on order, one constructed out of Sapient Pearwood, a wood very nearly impervious to magic. The man then produced a second one just like it, put it in front of the young dwarf and told Cyrus, barefaced, to go wild. There were some explanations about how the wood being nearly entirely supernaturally inert might actually manage to weather the worst of what Cyrus could shove into it, but ultimately the argument was less an argument and more along the lines of "there is a point where we needed to stop and we have clearly passed it, but let's keep going and see what happens." At least according to Father.

The Archmage did not use those words of course, electing instead to go on a long, involved spiel regarding the merits of his idea to let Cyrus "use the most uncooperative vessel possible to decant a large quantity of essence all at once in controlled circumstances." Gorion felt understandably vindicated after the dust settled in the wake of the rampage of the half suitcase, half homicidal maniac that sprouted a few hundred tiny legs, savaged the entirety of the top laboratory in the Tower of Exaltation and, after growing bored with the Walls of Force and Resilient Spheres that Khelben and Gorion kept throwing up, yawned sleepily and Planeshifted to parts unknown.

There had been an actual mouth. A mouth with lots of big square teeth white as sycamore and a pulsating tongue red as mahogany.

And Cyrus had only really focused on "protect" when going through the motions of the essence-supplemented enchantment too.

The two adults afterwards decided to use containers made of less disagreeable materials and further ensure each "enchanted" item was tightly packed, wrapped and warded away individually somewhere deep within the Keep's bowels. They even more decisively ruled to leave the backup Pearwood chest be, stash it somewhere well away from Cyrus just in case. Perhaps in a different dimension to be doubly sure.

Cyrus should probably have felt insulted but he hadn't had enough practice at caring about things yet, so he didn't. Especially with the change that the Blackstaff underwent on the inside after the event, a change which continued over the next months. Khelben's self-shade had looked fit to be dunked in water too cool off after that incident – angry, shocked, outraged, embarrassed, conflicted, hopeful, regretful, Cyrus couldn't tell – and he never seemed to settle back into the grey/dark/clotted after that, nor erupt in hot/tar/fire. Cyrus didn't note any increase in Arunsun's outer countenance but he couldn't help but feel the old Archmage had changed, or begun changing but fighting against it, whatever it was. Or perhaps it was the reverse. The young dwarf didn't know for certain and he lacked the frame of reference to bring it up in any sort of constructive manner and let things go back to normal.

A normal with a bit more exasperation on Father's part but less anger and mistrust towards the Archmage of Waterdeep.

Thus continued Cyrus Anwar's life for three whole years – though thankfully he managed to avoid creating any more eldritch abominations and the Spork of Flaying was entirely Imoen's fault – then suddenly it was 2 Myrtul, 1360 DR, his twelfth birthday.

Gorion had taken over the western half of that drop of "common" civilization in Candlekeep's Hearth known as Winthrop's Inn and held a little celebration for him in the westernmost part of the common area. Though perhaps "little" wasn't accurate anymore, given that in addition to Gorion, Imoen and Khelben Arunsun the occasion was also attended by Parda, Karan, Larth, half a dozen off-duty watchers including Erik, Hull and Fuller, as well as Firebead Elvenhair and Jondalar the Master-at-Arms (to be). Tethtoril himself dropped by for an hour or so, as did Amanther and Thearabho though the latter couldn't stay even that long because he would be going on duty for the evening.

The little emotional texture Cyrus had managed to scrounge for himself made him feel rather like he should be more appreciative of all those people than he was.

Gift-giving wasn't a part of celebrations in Candlekeep – the monks were mainly concerned with books and it wasn't like they could gift one to someone and expect it not to be added or copied into Candlekeep's collection. But there was good, hearty food, plenty of drink and a constant stream of pleasant music, an indulgence made tolerable by the sound isolation wards that had could be raised on command over the Inn for specific occasions like that one.

Cyrus sat next to his father at a table near the west-most wall, drinking from a cup of mulled wine flavoured with cinnamon. On the side perpendicular to his and backed against the other corner wall was Khelben Arunsun, but it wasn't him the dwarf was looking at. Instead, the boy watched and listened as Imoen had her first public performance as part of a band. As with all other trades and hobbies, there were quite a few monks who knew how to play one or more instruments and they had gladly taught Imoen whenever they could spare the time. Those same monks were playing accompaniment to her now as she performed her first composition, and Cyrus found himself surprised to realize he didn't immediately recognized all the instruments on display. It was a springy and rapid piece, so intrinsically _Imoen_ that Cyrus actually chuckled for the first time in his life when she started hopping foot-to-foot and made her fiddle produce sounds Cyrus was fairly sure were impossible under normal circumstances. Looking deeper after concentrating for the first half a minute of the song he was even more surprised to see magic at work. She'd either learned or invented a way to make the fiddle strings wind on themselves oddly with every bow slide.

Well, she _had_ spent nearly half the time he did learning magic doing the same thing just one table away under whoever wasn't teaching _him_ things at the time, so she was bound to pick some things up even if she did have to divert a lot more time to catching up to him in terms of general lore and working on 1011 Uses for Prestidigitation.

Relaxing back into the normal world he also admitted that the man playing the tin whistle was remarkable in how he made the simple instrument sound as part of that performance.

The piece ended and the whole Inn, even the people not there for his celebration, burst into applause which Imoen soaked up with a blinding smile – Prestidigitation to render her teeth sparkling white? – and a few grandiose bows. "Thank you, thank you! I'll be here all evening! And if you're particularly unlucky I may even decide to try to come up with something on the spot, your Gods help you all. So make your peace with our prince over yonder as soon as possible if you plan to do the wise thing and scamper before that fate befalls this place!"

As Gorion chuckled next to him Cyrus judged that Imoen had gotten much better at jesting over the years.

"You're smiling," Khelben remarked, drawing Gorion's attention back to his son.

"Am I?" He reached up to his face without meaning too. "It seems I am."

There were no words to describe the colour that shone inside Gorion at seeing and hearing that. It was still a pale echo of what he used to be right after Cyrus' birth but leagues above anything he'd managed within since the balcony. The man wrapped him in an arm and held him close for a few moments but he didn't seem to have any words.

"Tell me, boy," Arunsun spoke again once Cyrus had been released. "Now that you've had enough time to grow accustomed to it, what do you think of magic?"

"Magic…" Cyrus actually had spent a fair bit of his off-hours contemplating that. "Magic… is an alarmingly widespread and far-reaching method to limit progress."

Gorion and Khelben stared. Neither said anything. They seemed to be too stunned for it.

"Don't misunderstand, I fully acknowledge its usefulness," the boy carried on as the improvised band started a more familiar tavern song. "But for all its benefits it's oddly counterintuitive in application."

Gorion blinked and furrowed his brow as Khelben seemed to find his voice. "And why would you say that?" There was no condemnation or suspicion in his words.

The dwarf eyed the Archmage. "Your memory is as good as mine is with active magic working on it, and yet you somehow forget every single spell in your mind every evening." He tilted his head as he drew circles on the lip of the cup with his fingertip. "How could that be anything but suspicious."

"I suppose it might seem that way," the old man said thoughtfully, though his inner shades seemed to have started fluctuating strangely for some reason. "But times have changed from what they used to be. There are good reasons for why things are as they are. I assumed you had come upon them in your reading."

"You mean Karsus," the boy guessed. "I still think it's suspicious though. I agree that Mystra had a good reason to limit access to spells above ninth level after that event, but to essentially redesign the Weave so as to literally mind-wipe every single Wizard in Realmspace every day still sounds beyond drastic to me."

"Memorizing spells is perhaps a misnomer," the Archmage argued. "It's not entirely accurate. What we do is store the complete pattern into our minds so as to transfer it into reality when needed. Power and conceptual weight is effectively condensed into a usable form that the Weave can recognise as needed. Mortal minds are not made to keep a hold of such crystallized concepts and power long-term."

The boy frowned at his cup. "And yet people could permanently remember those patterns just fine before Karsus, to say nothing of High Magic. And even today there are sorcerers who can do the same for whatever reason, as if the control mechanism in the Weave doesn't apply to them or is somehow degenerating if Wild Mages are any indication. And let's not forget Bards who have no need of spellbooks or any other wizard trappings to cast arcane spells either, so long as they have the means needed to include the audible components."

The two older men looked at the boy silently for a while, before Arunsun spoke once again. "You are entirely too paranoid for someone with your upbringing who is not at least twenty years of age." Then he sighed. "But given what you see with those eyes of yours and my initial conduct in regards to you, it's not entirely unwarranted."

Cyrus had more to say though. "One also wonders what people intelligent enough to become mages would be able to accomplish if they set their minds to other fields like engineering and architecture," he looked at the pictures lining the wall behind Winthrop's bar. "Weaponsmithing even. I can't help but think that inventions like the smoke powder and derived weapons that Gond gave Lantan during the Avatar Crisis would crop up a lot more often."

"Now you sound like a gnome," Khelben said with a quirked eyebrow.

"… I get the odd feeling that I just missed the signal for giving a specific response to that remark," the boy admitted.

Gorion sighed on his other side but his soul transmitted amusement as well. "At least that is not something you need to blame on the cause for everything else troublesome in your life." Cyrus and Khelben had revealed his awareness of his parentage from the very start of the new tutoring arrangement. They wouldn't have been able to hide it even if there had been a reason for it given the main goal of teaching enchanting in the first place. "Dwarves as a whole are known far and wide as a humourless bunch."

Cyrus almost asked if that applied to his mother as well but decided to leave it for some other time. He wanted the new glow in his Father's soul to last for as long as possible.

"Well then," Khelben Blackstaff grunted. "This would be the perfect time to try and threaten not to gift you with lessons in a high-level spell of your choice, but since humour does not seem to be on the table we may as well skip the small talk and get right down to it. Boy," the man waited until Cyrus met his eyes. "If I told you I would be willing to teach and even demonstrate a level five or higher spell for you to memorise with that second sight of yours and use as you see fit, what would you choose?"

"Analyse Dweomer."

It was like the world hiccupped at his immediate and completely unhesitant response.

"That…" Gorion started.

"That is quite possibly the most useless spell you could have chosen." The Archmage was staring at him oddly again.

"Yes," Cyrus agreed with a nod, looking away and at his cup. "The rods and wands used by the monks I am already familiar with, and magical equipment of any other sort is more or less pointless or outright banned on Keep grounds with the exception of security and peacekeeping forces, and even they keep all items hidden under loose robes for the most part. In all, save for when I'm in the Tower of Exaltation such a spell would have no purpose." The boy sipped from his mulled wine and used Prestidigitation to heat it back up to a proper temperature. "I imagine that investing in drawing the Weave pattern again and again as I go about my day would be supremely thriftless, especially if I attempt to eschew the material component and consume resources for absolutely no gain while attempting to compensate for the lack. And trying to enchant items with the ability would be even more draining, I suspect, especially if I attempt to outright conjure the required rubies via my non-arcane means. And my track record with imbuing the proper effect when using my auxiliary means rather than magic alone is practically abysmal so I would simply _have_ to rinse and repeat and keep pushing forward with an essentially doomed venture." The young dwarf shook his head. "Such quantities of inner resources spent on an ultimately meaningless pursuit. Why, I imagine that habits such as those I just described would render all that _unique_ power essentially wasted." His mouth actually curled into an imitation of that first and only smirk back in the wolf cave. "Practically _worthless_."

The inn was filled with raucous merriment but Gorion and Khelben Arunsun may as well not have been there at all, for all the mind they paid to their surroundings.

Then Cyrus' attention was suddenly drawn back to the not-quite-grey/dark/clotted-anymore that was the soul of the Archmage. The Archmage whose face had twisted in a supremely uncommon expression and whose shoulders seemed to be shaking-

Khelben Blackstaff suddenly doubled over and burst into helpless laughter so free and loud that he would have collapsed if not for the table and the hand he used to prop his forehead. The man tried to stifle it but failed immediately, devolving into the sort of roaring guffaws that less than a handful of people still living had ever witnessed from him before. The entire inn went dead silent around their table, all patrons turning and staring, some outright gaping at the spectacle. Even the minstrel group had gone dead quiet and were looking at the Waterdhavian with their eyes boggled.

Cyrus didn't see them do it. He almost didn't notice the sound dying and the field of self-stars going stock-still in their glows in unison, such was the boy's astonishment at the change that Khelben Arunsun's own self underwent the instant his roaring laugh burst from him for all to see and hear.

Under young dwarven eyes that weren't eyes, what was once grey/dark/clotted and more recently simmering, churning shade-hues practically collapsed in on themselves and then exploded outwards in an utterly dazzling display of sense-beams the colour of white, golden, emerald and that tepid ghost of compassion that entirely transmuted into a sun's corona with the consistency of silvery flare winds coloured pink/not-pink/royal-purple/violet and every nameless colour Cyrus had ever found pleasing to look upon.

And despite the very limited success of the enchantment plans and his only borderline ability to feel emotion, Cyrus reflexively drew an intake of breath that expressed nothing short of reverence. "Magnificent…"

Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun kept laughing for a good full minute before he became self-possessed enough to wipe his eyes and steady his breathing. Only at that point did he notice the awestruck look that Cyrus had pinned him with. "What's wrong, boy?" He asked, not schooling his demeanour even then. "Are you truly unfamiliar with the concept of laughter? Even you laughed once, however briefly."

Cyrus didn't answer. He didn't register Gorion weaving a silencing ward around their table either.

Khelben's amusement finally tapered off at his continued silence. "What boy? What do you see?"

"Deaths…" The newborn star shuddered as if blown through by a terrible wind but Cyrus knew what to say to prevent it from dying back to the clotted bleakness of before. He had just what was needed. He had the truth. "So many deaths just disappeared."

The brilliant star behind Arunsun's realm-self steadied and seemed to grow even further in brightness and clarity. The boy hadn't believed it was possible. Even though it still wasn't as bright as Imoen's it was much more complexly coloured and active, borne into existence by the joining of mental sophistication with equally sophisticated emotions that had long ago been pushed into the deepest pits of mirthless rationalization.

And so it was that Khelben Blackstaff looked at him utterly spellbound for the third time in his recollection, to the point that Gorion had to carry the conversation along. "Son… what deaths just disappeared?"

"Deaths that hadn't happened." The aftershocks of being so close to that type of internal transformations seemed to finally be fading somewhat, allowing him to begin making sense of things. "Deaths that would have happened but now… won't." He slowly breathed out as he forced his mind back to coherence. "And the blood… It's all gone."

The Archmage seemed to give a start and go completely still and unblinking.

Cyrus could relate. After speaking that thought aloud the boy himself just had to stare again at the star that had consumed the bleak/dark/clotted, all of Khelben Arunsun's preconceptions, regrets and hangups formed over nine centuries. Consumed and transmuted them into a shine so bright and harmoniously colourful that only Gorion's soul of long ago had ever outdone. Even Tethtoril only came close to the level of complexity in soul-light, though his shine was somewhat clearer and lighter. Evocative of his long-standing self-assurance in regards to his beliefs and morals.

And it dawned on the young dwarf then that the underrunning belief of the ancient man that the world would be better off with Cyrus dead, the belief that had steadily faded over the many months but never truly gone away, had completely and utterly disappeared.

"Beautiful…" Cyrus Anwar murmured reverently. Right there in front of his very eyes, Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun had undergone a complete shift in alignment. The young dwarf only barely managed to move his attention away from that wondrous sight and to the man's eyes, but he could do no less than express utmost awe after experiencing the birth of so wondrous a brilliance. "You are beautiful."

Whatever Cyrus or anyone else had expected to happen, it didn't matter. Khelben Blackstaff just doubled over laughing again, just as totally as the first time.

A while later the ancient wizard succeeded in calming himself enough to string words together once more. "You should mind who you say that to, young one." His tone was truly warm when speaking to him for the first time ever. "People might take it in ways you didn't intend."

"Ah, that's right," Cyrus realized. "People actually proposition each other and engage in physical intercourse of their own initiative and consent, don't they."

Gorion's soul-light did something truly… odd behind Cyrus, making the dwarf think he'd likely missed one of his Father's rare moments of open-mouthed stupefaction.

As for the ancient wizard, he merely produced a strange, half-laugh-half-sigh and let his head hang for a moment. "Or you can just say thing like that and not have to worry about people wanting anything to do with you at all."

There was silence. Cyrus wondered if it was one of those awkward ones. His emotional frame of reference still wasn't very good.

Gorion dropped the silencing ward, which didn't reveal much noise but seemed to act as a signal for the others to go back to their business. Not that they managed, but at least they pretended to try.

"Right then," Khelben Arunsun sighed and seemed to sit much more at ease. His eyes were actually softer than they'd ever been in the boy's memory and his tone warm. "I'll let your father teach you Analyse Dweomer I think." His lips curled into a small, contemplative smile. "I expect you to have chosen a properly useful spell when I come back in a month to work on it with you."

The next day when Khelben Blackstaff was ready to leave and making his goodbyes to them at the gate he did not settle for the terse or rote goodbyes of usual. He gazed down at Cyrus' short form for a while before turning to Gorion, earnest both within and without. "There once used to be friendship between us."

Gorion's eyes closed for a few moments and he sought Cyrus' hand without realizing it. The boy reached out to grab it. He had enough of a frame of reference for that much.

The monk rallied something inside and opened his eyes to meet those of the other man. "Was there? Truly? I apparently did not even know who you were until three years ago, when you-" he bit back what he wanted to say.

"When I decided to murder your son." The old wizard said quietly. Contritely. No, beyond even that. Cyrus noticed something besides colourless void in the background of the new star. "Words cannot describe how wretched I am." It was a sickly sort of green streaked with black thorns and grasping feelers reminiscent of Cyrus' own greatest sin of the past. "No words can express how wretched I feel now."

"Only now?" Gorion challenged just as tensely.

Arunsun did not say anything to that. The black-brambled and torn-skewered green background seemed to spread farther around his self-light. Oddly, it seemed to render the shine more intense. The scarlet of determination further reaching than otherwise. "Can there truly be no friendship between us again?" The older but younger-looking man pled.

The two men fell silent for a long time.

Cyrus was somewhat surprised to hear his father break it. "Do you even know what friendship is, Khelben?" It was the first time Cyrus heard his Father call the man by his first name. "Are you even willing to share anything real about yourself? To _give_?" Two bright soul-lights of different colours seemed to push on one another. "What about what _I_ should give. Do you think I have it in me to care about your wish for friendship between us now? Do you even know what happens every time I look at your face?" The man was putting visible effort into keeping a level voice. "Every time you are in my sight I am pulled back to the sight of your self-absorbed, self-righteous self of years past deciding that my son needs to die. Every time I see you in my mind's eye plotting the murder of a 9-year-old boy while utterly convinced of your self-granted authority as a judge and executioner." Each word was like a physical blow, so it wracked Arunsun's soul-light all throughout. "Each time I recall how I had never before felt so helpless." Blackstaff's guilt enveloped the star entirely and it seemed like the ancient man had just taken the first step on the path back to grey/dark/clotted. "Each time I recall how I had never before felt such _hatred_."

The guilt reached the point where it choked more than fuelled the light and Cyrus Anwar suddenly gripped his father's holding hand, bringing his words to a stop.

But only for a moment.

"There will be no 'again,'" Gorion said flatly. The answer made the green-tinted guilt writhe and funnel further outwards and forward, as if wrapping around the newborn soul-sun twice over. "For the simple reason that there was no true friendship between us the first time."

"There was…" The Archmage leaned on the Blackstaff he held in his hand. Gorion's insulted glare made him amend quickly though. "There was on my part, please believe that. Older or younger, the Khelben Arunsun you knew was real. His thoughts, his beliefs, his words, they were real."

"A statement easy to interpret in all manner of ways," Gorion shot back. "After all, we were only ever privy to your _words_ , and real does not mean _honest_."

"I was going to steal the Scepter of the Sorcerer Kings."

It was a good thing Gorion had preemptively cast a silencing ward around them because the shock and outrage on his face was beyond blatant at hearing that non-sequitur, even in spite of how completely that sudden statement had arrested all his movement. The man was so sincerely and angrily stunned by the audacity of stealing _that_ object that even Cyrus found it in himself to wonder what it was to engender such an emotional response.

"That was going to be my next move after checking on the Tethyr situation three years ago." The Archmage barrelled forward, pushed forward by the guilt and mindset he'd decided to live by from now on, for as long as he could. "I would have stolen it without the knowledge of the other Harpers, used it for…" His words tapered off at the betrayed and livid glare of Gorion. Livid glare that merely depleted into an overwhelmed weariness that killed almost the entirety of Father's soul brightness. "I suppose it does not matter now," Arunsun finished heavily.

"Go." Gorion uttered in a voice completely devoid of life, not bearing to even look at the other man. "Just… Just go."

But Cyrus would not have a beautiful, newborn light snuffed out in its infancy. Not like his was, if he ever had any glow of his own at all. "You'll be able to talk about this with more level hearts in a month."

The reminder buoyed Arunsun's soul with a three-fold flame of blue, lavender and gold and Cyrus finally knew the look of that thing called hope. It emerged from among the other rays and countered the erosive impact of the sickly guilt like the most wondrous solar flare.

Gorion's red anger and the signs of emerging misery were a sharp contrast to that but Cyrus didn't regret speaking up. And he wasn't sure it was because he couldn't feel much about anything this time.

Khelben Blackstaff looked sadly at the small dwarf, his face a picture of pained regret and indescribable shame that nearly blotted out every speck of light within him for several agonizingly long moments. "I am sorry." Moments that just extended into infinity as Cyrus watched. "I am so sorry for everything." But he did not outright ask for forgiveness from him because he felt as undeserving of it as of Gorion's. Felt he lacked the right.

"I forgive you," the boy said even as Gorion gave a start at his easy answer but Cyrus wanted that all-snuffing _darkness_ gone as fast as possible, though the truth wanted out as well. "But forgiveness doesn't really make a difference to the one asking, does it? They still bear responsibility for the consequences." Cyrus looked at the ancient wizard while the latter and Father stared at him strangely. He was long past the point where he found it unusual. "I didn't really feel much of anything over it, as you well know." That only seemed to make both stars dim even further. "But I _do_ understand what I'm saying by my answer."

Unfortunately, as had become par for the course in Cyrus' life, his attempt at making things easier on people only made them feel worse.

Wondering why he never managed to say the right thing except by accident and resisting the unfamiliar urge to scowl, the boy turned to behold his father. "He's honestly regretful, father." He paused, then continued more quietly. It was never easy to translate what he saw in words but he was well practiced now. "And his change is true. There is only one thing there that could push him back into what he was before, although in a clotted mass of different colours, and it's guilt." He gripped his father's hand more tightly for a moment in emphasis. "I know that every history and story alike usually has the repentant one undertake a series of trials before they are reformed on the side of good, but such things are not necessary here." He turned to look with narrow eyes at the nearly entirely dark-covered sun and all but glared at it until the shame obligingly begun breaking down. Only then did he look at his Father again. "He is already _good_."

Gorion _stared_.

A father stared at his son like he did not know how to process anything anymore, though even that passed. "Are you asking me to forgive as well, then?"

"Yes, father." Cyrus somehow smiled then, even if it barely qualified. "It won't help him much, his regret is too much for it to be settled at that, but it will help you." He looked between Gorion's eyes and the dim soul and back. "Ultimately it's all about discarding the control one allows anger and resentment to hold over their soul, isn't it?"

Gorion's self-light wavered spastically between dimly hopeful, hopefully bright, darkly lightless and several hundred other shades before the light began to once again resume, like they'd been doing for all those three years, eating and burning the grasping tendrils of _betrayed/angry/hurt/ I expected so much better, fool that I was_. "The second time in your life that you ever ask anything of anyone and it is for…" Gorion's face spoke of the sort of spellbound wonder Cyrus never knew how to interpret properly, but he at least knew enough to be sure that it was more memorable than anything Blackstaff had ever shown.

The men didn't say anything else to each other that day, but the implication that Gorion would at least make an attempt at establishing a new rapport beyond their grudging arrangement of alternating tutorship was more than clear.

And for the first time in his life, Cyrus Anwar knew true, unvarnished _relief_.

"-. .-"

Well, relief was definitely not what he was feeling now.

He'd been preparing for some discussion or other with his half-brother. That was how things usually went in his life in those rare cases when he spoke up without prompting.

He hadn't expected Sarevok Anchev to suddenly charge at him with an enraged bellow. Charge through the night's darkness with speed belying his massive suit of plate mail armour, fast enough to send air rushing in a funnel as he brought his weapon – Chaosrend – sweeping in a wide arc meant to cut him in half at the waist.

This would be the point where Cyrus suddenly brought out his trump card, that mighty spell or other that his second most revered teacher in magic had taught and shown him enough times for him to cast it instantly at will.

Unfortunately, the spell Cyrus had chosen besides Analyze Dweomer had been Control Water.

He'd had a great time with that spell too. Or allowed Imoen to have a great time with it those times when they used his previously-created climbing holds to sneak out of Candlekeep and have fun along the seashore. Even exhausting all the Bhaal essence willing to pour out of his body at any given time to supercharge that spell did little harm to the water. The sea was deathless after all, and any other aftereffects were easily washed away. There were a few rumours about murderfish from the deviants sentenced to dive for shellfish after harming books accidentally but investigations into those accounts were deemed inconclusive.

And all of that was rather irrelevant to the current situation.

His would be killer moved so quickly that Cyrus would barely have had enough time to draw his longsword from the scabbard on his back. It was a good thing the dwarf hadn't planned to even try.

Instead, Cyrus lunged in the same direction Chaosrend was traveling in and sent Sightless thrusting right at the rage-filled man's face.

The outcome would have been encouraging if the situation had been any less dire. Driven by some well-honed instinct or just noticing the Silent Image in time, the man jerked in the opposite direction before the illusion-covered blade went through his left eye. The greatsword's tip instead cut a groove from the corner of his eye across his temple and glanced off the side of the helmet, though not before cutting off one of the teeth framing the face.

The silent image covering the weapon dispelled just as the other warrior turned his unexpected dodge into a roll – _impressive, given the sheer weight that armour must have had_ – and leapt once again to his feet. Cyrus knew he would have failed to deflect the next lunge of the man but Sightless had chosen well in draining the man's haste enhancement so now the dwarf could actually follow his movements. Parry the swing, deflect the following thrust, feint against his own feint and counter with a neck chop while being ready to disengage if –

The clearing lit up all at once with the light of an elemental invocation, sound of chants and the magical discharge and glimmering sound notes of a still spell – _Gorion, Spell Turning_ – firing just in time to return a hail of multiple fire arrows back where they came from. The old sage immediately followed by sending a Greater Shadow Tentacle at one of the two henchmen running at him from the clearing side opposite from where Cyrus was.

There was one instant of confusion as the man – _Eagus_ – was grappled and fell to the ground. The enemy wizard – _Semaj –_ fired a spell trigger – _Improved Invisibility, Haste, Minor Globe of Invulnerability_ – barely in time to render his reflected spell harmless. Sarevok didn't pause but Cyrus expected him this time and blocked the downward chop. The force of it drove him to one knee – _peak human strength, enchanted bracers to push him beyond superhuman limits_ – and the following kick would have knocked out a tooth and likely stunned him at best if the dwarf hadn't used his own considerable might to push against the ground the instant the momentum behind the sword ended. He blocked the weakened kick with one of his own and nearly got beheaded for his trouble moments later when the priestess caught him with a blindness spell while Gorion was distracted blasting the nearest ogre back into the forest.

Instead the dwarf ducked his half-brother's next swing, deflected another and, when the blow proved expectedly too strong to let him keep proper hold of Sightless' hilt, he hurled both swords aside with all the might he could muster one-handed to throw the man's weapon arm wide. Unfortunately, the glowing-eyed man had come close enough by then to try and headbutt him. Not so unfortunately, having one hand forcefully freed meant that Cyrus could snap his fingers in the man's face.

What would normally have been a small flame fit to light a candle turned instead into a two-foot-thick funnel of fire when Prestidigitation was combined with that interesting feat of metamagic known as spell empowerment.

A funnel of fire that blew into and around Sarevok Anchev's face.

He fell back with a howl.

It was quite unfortunate for them, Cyrus thought, that he was actually _better_ at fighting while blinded.

The moment loomed around him as he hung between falling and not falling backwards from the abrupt disengagement. Sarevok Anchev, startled and temporarily blinded and dazed but undamaged due to the near total spell and elemental resistance conferred upon him by his Bhaaltaint-channeling armour. The invisible – _not to Death's eyes he isn't_ \- Semaj in the last moment of calling extra monsters, Gorion – _outraged and insulted, they thought a mere fire arrow spell would be any good against either of them –_ uttering the last syllable of Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, finger pointed at the twin-axe wielding mercenary – _Kamon_.

Options weren't many. Not given the nature of the single outcome that Cyrus was willing to accept. Gorion's odds of death if Cyrus engaged Sarevok exclusively: certain _– it shall be a waste of your life_. Sarevok's skill with the blade wasn't really beyond Thearabho's but the dwarf hadn't had time to practice and retrain the skill to account for his lower stature. With Sarevok being physically superior in all ways except speed and balance, and being several times over more seasoned besides, the outcome of a protracted battle was assured. Odds of failure if he fought in defence of Father: certain. Odds if he charged for one of the mercenary henchmen: certain. Odds if they tried to focus on the main threat – certain. Certain.

Certain, certain, certain, certain-

UNNACEPTABLE.

The two enhanced magic stones he'd been palm-spinning up until he was attacked lay quiet and useless on the ground.

The moment passed.

_Telekinesis._

Cyrus Anwar turned his stagger into a looping spin, caught the stone he'd created earlier on and whirled around nearly 360 degrees, then lashed out.

He was never planning to rely on the Bhaal taint to help him figure out how to _save_ a life anyway.

The smooth, round rock flew quicker than the eye could see, smashed into the priestess's mouth just as she was chanting the last syllable of a Pain Symbol and trailed bits of bone and bloodspray as it came out the other side.


	5. Foil

"Tamoko!"

Death flashed through Cyrus mind the moment his half-brother cried out his lover's name – _surprised, earnest, reciprocates her feelings despite his nearly total lack of empathy –_ and the dwarf barely threw himself face-down to the ground in time. Having avoided being split in twain, he frantically rolled to the right – _Sarevok's snarling follow-up chop sunk into the ground more than width deep_ – then put all his strength in his left arm and _shoved_ the ground away.

His whole frame literally left the ground entirely in a bastardized corkscrew – _sloppy, Imoen's was still better and the armour certainly didn't help_ – that deposited him _almost_ outside the range of Chaosrend's third rage-amplified slash. He had to lean back nearly 45 degrees to avoid having his throat cut but the resulting glancing hit cut through the front of his armour like paper _– why had he even bothered getting it to begin with?_ – but the miss gave the dwarf a the short moment he used to assess his positioning – _seven meters south-southeast away from Gorion who was casting an invocation spell at the enemy conjurer despite two ogres entering melee range –_ then he changed direction and leapt forward, blocking Chaosrend's return swing with Sightless and snapping a fireblast into Sarevok Anchev's face a second time.

The man howled in body-staggering shock again, though outrage seemed to paint more of the scream than startlement this time. And he recovered faster.

But that was fine, Cyrus only needed a moment.

_Prestidigitation to turn the Ogres' eyes opaque!_

The nearest beast went from threatening howl to a considerably more shocked howl and swung wildly at suddenly seeing nothing, hitting its fellow in the side with staggering force. Said fellow tried to regain its balance by throwing its arms wide – _its huge club swung right at Gorion's head and glanced off his Stoneskin_ – just as Father finished his incantation.

Lightning blasted from his outstretched palms, hitting both Ogres with death-dealing intensity head-on before traveling on and striking – _barely non-lethal –_ a third ogre, one of two that Semaj's spell had summoned earlier besides the Ogre Mage that had just cast mirror image. Ogre Mage which, like the only other enemy still in combat, was too far away for Cyrus to reach with what spells he had without suffering a critical hit to situational awareness.

"Run, child!" Gorion yelled at him, magic gathering around his hands yet again. "Get out of here!"

Right.

Blatant disobedience it was then. Another first to add to the many firsts of that day.

_Telekinesis._

The second magic stone Cyrus had dropped flew to his palm as he leapt back, then flew out of it faster than an arrow right at where he knew his own opponent's right eye to be in the flames he'd blasted him with.

Only to stagger him but ultimately bounce aside without any damage after encountering the full-face visor that the teeth-like frame had melded into because of _course_ it could do that.

He should have hit the still tentacle-grappling Eagus instead. And the tooth Sightless had carved off the other Bhaalspawn's helmet earlier wasn't even courteous enough to leave a gap of exploitable size.

Then Semaj finally got off a proper spell.

A fire arrow.

A big, angry, homing fire arrow coming right at Cyrus.

Coming in _fast._

Too fast to track and impose _stillness_.

The dwarf forcefully ignored Gorion's flare of panic – _concentration unbroken even so_ – jumped back from Sarevok's latest strike, traced the longsword harness death with his fingernail while mid-leap – _it broke apart under Death as easily as everything else did_ – then reached back, grabbed it sheath and all and tossed it right in the path of the magical projectile just as it came within three feet of his face.

The longsword shattered utterly, piece of refuse that it was – _he should have just bought a shield and left it at that_ – but the rain of shards that pelted him and forced his eyes closed didn't bother him being that the dwarf was already blind from earlier.

Unfortunately, that fact seemed to have slipped Sarevok's mind.

Unfortunately for _Cyrus_.

The force that slammed into his guard seemed three times greater than that of all prior assaults. The second horizontal swing that followed was even mightier, slamming into Sightless hard enough that Cyrus low guard broke entirely. His shoulder flared painfully as it dislocated and Thearabho's sword weapon gored his own leg before flying from his grasp even as he himself nearly flew off his feet. He retained enough sense to try and jump away from his livid half-brother and managed to get off with just another one of those glancing slices to his armour –

The entire splint mail _shattered_ off him as nearly all the force behind the attack transferred into it. The resulting explosion blew out Cyrus' eardrums – _Gorion's soul light flared with the stark terror of 11 years before so perhaps he'd cried out even if he couldn't hear him –_ and the dwarf himself literally flew backwards until he slammed back-first into a tree with breath-stealing force. His mind swam groggily and his blood churned in his veins from the aftereffects of the bone-deep cut across his torso that had _ripped_ at his life force and made his blood churn and sear.

Sarevok Anchev stalked forward, soul-simmer boiling with some sort of unholy glee that wasn't altogether his. Cyrus wondered if he was laughing since he couldn't hear him. He couldn't hear anything.

Then he had no time to wonder about anything because the man was thrusting at his chest.

Death flashed before his eyes.

It was hardly something new.

The dwarf waited until the last moment before dropping. Chaosrend went almost half-way through the beech tree's trunk.

Cyrus kicked Sarevok's feet from under him, rolled away and staggered behind the beech, taking advantage of a daze-induced near-faceplant to instead bodily smash into the trunk and force his dislocated shoulder back into place. Now if he could stagger back in his father's direction so that that staff of healing could fulfil its intended role, perhaps they-

Chaosrend ripped forward and then sideways out of the tree leaving a gouge in it going nearly all the way to the middle. Incidentally, it also happened to slice Cyrus horizontally over the chest a second time.

Stale-coloured frustration gave way to euphoric satisfaction. A father's soul turned from merely terrified to utterly horrified before the black pits of despair Cyrus hadn't seen for years started to suck everything in, rendering meaningless the success of leaving an ogre legless after a rockburst spell caught the stone beneath its foot.

Cyrus felt… surprised as he toppled backwards. The man was supposed to be unable to chain two Deathbringer assaults that way, but he had and he was a nearly opaque, full-body mass of sickly green speckled with black/red/green/poison. Either he had miscalculated or the rules had changed mid-way through the engagement.

He got his answer the moment his back met the ground and his moment of death lit his thoughts for the last time that night.

Aching arm pushed a supine body to the left just as Sarevok Anchev thrust down at him.

Chaosrend pierced him right below the right collarbone and sunk nearly three inches before Cyrus caught the blade in a stone-hard grip with both hands.

Bhaal's taint rose up inside him, a mind-suffocating vision of a soul drowned at birth in the depths of an ocean of blood that seemed to envelop the world. Blood that practically plunged into the greatsword that had sunk into his flesh, traveling up through the magic embedded in the metal until it poured right into the guzzling pond on the far end of the sword sticking out of his chest. It was meant to be a draining enchantment only perverse enough to eat the life of an enemy while healing the wielder. _Only_ , if the term even applied. But the magic twisted and perverted further, as it always tended to when Cyrus was involved, ripping weave patterns, bullrushing through power channels and disregarding conceptual bounds as Bhaal's taint rose up to take them.

It was practically… eager. Wilful. _Deliberate_ , almost, if not for the unquenchable thirst to _take_ that defined the transfer.

Sarevok Anchev's frame started to quake with what was no doubt euphoric laughter, but Cyrus couldn't hear. He could see the blood running through him though, the taint simmering, the heart racing with ecstasy.

How foolish.

He didn't understand, didn't hear, didn't _see_. He didn't _feel_ the Vestige of Bhaal latching onto the opportunity, the surprised glee at having its plans accelerated. It wouldn't matter _which_ of his two spawn here survived the night. Either the older would drain the younger dry and succumbed to him immediately, or the younger walked away and continued to live his false life until he'd sunk enough of his vestigial essence into him right from the Astral Plane and took him over entirely. Either way, one of them would walk into Candlekeep and use the vast amounts of essence stored in the many "failed" enchantments to precipitate his ascension regardless of the others-

Cyrus Anwar let go with one hand, used prestidigitation pull Jondalar's dagger out of his boot – _needs to skip killing the enchantments, Greater Magic Weapon_ – pressed the tip against the part of Chaosrend right above his skin, then traced the death line.

The weapon exploded.

Metal and wild energy erupted everywhere, magic and whatever-magic-wasn't. It blew the human into the same tree he'd blasted Cyrus into earlier. Flying shards cut up the dwarf's face, but his eyes had been closed for a fair while already and his chest wound was more important anyway. Ignoring the pain due to sheer distraction and dismay over the realisation that the Vestige of Bhaal had actively contributed to the entire enchantment plan – _and why_ – the young dwarf struggled to stand and dug his fingers into his injury to pull the sword tip out.

It came loose with a blood spurt, but from what he could tell that issue would be resolved in a very short while.

With fire.

Sarevok swayed to his feet before him some paces away, but Cyrus Anwar didn't consider him a priority anymore, not with the empty pit of viscous misery eating at his apathy from over two dozen meters away. A human mage that had not been mind-addled by a dead god so had missed none of the last few minutes of that disaster of a night. Had witnessed Cyrus being cut down, then watched, listened and cast futilely as the human warrior stabbed his son and _laughed_. Laughed and laughed until the old sage could see nothing but the flames of spells that rained down on him. A wall of fire from Semaj and a flamestrike from the priestess that a freed Eagus had revived with her own Rod of Resurrection.

Fading ecstasy gave way to dazed outrage in the human that had nearly claimed a younger life, his own and that of everyone else in sight.

How Cyrus pitied the man.

Not just for what his life had become but for not noticing that the night was getting brighter in spite of the fireball's and flamestrike's fire dying down.

The bloodstream and Bhaaltaint shaped like Sarevok Anchev made as if to throttle him before the shock/panic/incredulity of his henchmen made him stop in place. They'd probably exchanged words or just shouted in shock and dismay. Words about the giant ball of fire floating above the upraised arms of the newly revealed, no longer Stoneskin-protected but otherwise unharmed sage of Candlekeep known as Gorion. The man who'd countered the spells sent against him with his Rod of Absorption and also acted under a spell of elemental protection the entire time. Protection good enough to leave him no worries about a fireball.

Even the empowered version of delayed blast fireball.

A ball of fire not pea-sized but _three meters in diameter_. A size that simply _had_ to violate some sort of law.

Cyrus blindly faced in the direction where he knew Sarevok's eyes had to be, but he could not muster a smirk or anything else.

Not with Gorion having his back to him and convinced he'd just witnessed his son's murder. The misery and despair disappeared nearly entirely, to the point where the man was effectively dead on the inside. He'd lived through literally the only event he did not _have_ it in him to live through, so neither would anyone else.

Gorion slowly lowered his arms.

And the gigantic ball of fire dropped in the exact spot where he was.

The explosion was absolutely _absurd_ in its range and heat and force. It burst outward like a tidal wave that glassed the hardened earth, overtook Semaj and Tamoko before they could cast protections stronger than the long-duration ones of the battle's start, then spilled over Cyrus and Sarevok both only to keep going outwards until the flames set everything on fire up to a half a mile beyond the treeline.

Sarevok cried out and fell over from the shockwave.

Cyrus' flesh seared.

It felt like life.

But besides his only threatening wound, he stood within the fire and was unburnt.

He'd had finally had enough time to stay still and focus without distractions. Blindness and deafness helped on that front, ironically, so that he was able to look at the Weave of Magic within and around him and command it to be _still_. Be still everywhere except his one, major stab wound. It would not do to bleed to death after all.

The fire was all around and above him, blazing like the indiscriminate force of nature that it was. Soon it would stop being a purely magical phenomenon and death-still Weave would be no protection at all. Already the air was heating beyond the range of comfort.

The young dwarf looked at where Gorion had set off that massive spell.

Martyrs. Hopeless, the lot of them.

Five steps had him next to the tree, three more had him past – _he absently cut the death line on the side still intact_ – then a dozen more got him to Sightless, which he picked up and strapped to the harness – _enchanted gift from one of Thearabho's late friends of times long past_ – that was still miraculously intact on his back. Turning north-northwest, he measured distances and counted the steps before steadily walking in the direction he wanted. He could not afford to rush this. The fire crackled fairly loudly in the night, but too much speed and his footsteps would be heard sooner than he liked. He noted in passing that both Semaj and Tamoko were still alive – _barely –_ after finally casting spells of protection from fire just a moment short of their concentration's limit, but all the ogres and the two human henchmen had gone to meet their Gods.

Behind and to the side, the much-abused tree collapsed.

Sarevok managed to get away in time.

How unfortunate.

How equally unfortunate that Cyrus hadn't the hearing to hear the reaction that must have accompanied the frenzied stupefaction that came with the sight of a beech tree coming down to smear you across the forest floor.

_Telekinesis._

The Staff of Healing that Father had dropped earlierwhen his soul stopped shining entirelyflew to the dwarf's grasp without anyone noticing.

_Cure blindness. Remove deafness. Heal Wounds._

_Shrink item and stash the miniature staff in a pocket._

Reaching the spot he wanted, the young dwarf breathed deeply in spite of the now burning quality of the air, flexed his hands and feet to prepare himself, then _charged_.

And when he was within five feet of the spot he'd been headed for just as the flames died down to less apocalyptic brightness and height – _not that they made a difference to him_ – he threw himself feet-first and slid the rest of the way just as his Father was finishing the incantation for Zajimarn's Field of Icy Razors.

A son swept his Father off his feet, tossed out one of the many empowered magic stones he still had two pocketsful of – _Semaj dropped to the ground open-mouthed for more than one reason, dead simply because a young man had needed to make room in his pocket for something else_ – then Cyrus Anwar whirled around, caught his father in his arms and ran away.


	6. Restless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Credit for the third character that gets spoken lines in this chapter goes to the Pocket Plane Group and their mod Wild Mage Additions. And Jack Vance of course, the author who invented the guy to begin with.

95%

A small part of Cyrus' mind afforded itself the leisure to wonder if cursing or laughing hysterically would be the reaction most appropriate to the reality that everything back there had only reduced the odds of Gorion dying by 5%. If he could bring himself to feel anything even remotely intense anyway, which he couldn't and didn't. Or was it that the _certainty_ was so far above total that it didn't register even to his very specific perception? Or maybe the fire was the reason. The fire he was still running through. As he'd been for the past minute yet _still_ he hadn't found any spots greater than half a foot across that weren't completely engulfed in it.

90%

Run.

87%

Run.

85%

Run some more.

80%

The all-encompassing light and heat suddenly broke and Cyrus Anwar finally had air to breathe that wasn't mixed with flame.

45%

The sharp drop in odds made him stumble and he nearly dropped his all-important burden, but the young dwarf managed to catch himself and take a deep breath.

47%

Panicked, outraged fury stalked hurriedly at the core of the forest fire he'd been rushing to escape, followed/hurting/aided by a second soul too un-dark and hopeful to ever fit with his, like a square peg in a round hole. The young dwarf's face curled in a scowl despite himself and he begun to hurry onwards again.

45%

Faster.

43%

Dodge the falling flaming tree, close both eyes against the burst of cackling embers that washed over everything as soon as the trunk smashed into the scorched ground. Run around, don't slip on the coarse woody debris, ignore the burning feeling on the skin from the wafting fire that still peppered the immediate area even all the way out here and _keep going_.

40%

That made two full minutes since he'd raced away from the centre of the explosion. A dreadful performance for what were a mere 500-some meters. Even with the excuse of having to watch his footing and dodge falling, dead nature, he should still have managed better at a full sprint even with a second body's weight pulling him down.

35%

And suddenly he was out of the treeline entirely, staggering out into the Lion's Way Road. The not-quite-paved but not-quite-dirt-either path they'd done their best to avoid since the Candlekeep Coastway. Cyrus looked from one side of the path to the other. It was surprisingly deserted, though he supposed they were far enough from Candlekeep that they'd left behind the many supplicants camping while waiting for access and _that was not important right now_. He looked past the massive obelisk as thick as 5 men and tall as 10 that marked the 25-mile waypoint, to the forest that picked up across the road and went on southwards for hours.

35%

Can't go back or they'll fry. Can't go east or they'll run into the other two as they made their own escape, can't go west because that would take them back to Candlekeep and the many vessels of Bhaaltaint – _his blood rose and simmered in anticipation of me/mine/euphoria/retribution_ – that they'd stockpiled in various safes and alcoves over the past 10 plus years. Keep going south then-

67%

Cyrus _snarled_ as he aborted the latest sprint he was about to charge off in – _force down the taint-pull before you react like half-brother again_ – and reconsidered the situation. Higher odds of Father's death the further they went. Others of Sarevok's underlings prowling the other part of the forest in search of them. _Thorough_.

35%

The world burned ever closer in the wake of his flight. Cyrus Anwar grit his teeth, then his face smoothed and his eyes landed once more on the stone-hewn obelisk just as his Father found his voice.

"… S-son…?"

36%

The sprint was sudden and cut Gorion off mid-word with a startled yelp. Unavoidable when being unceremoniously tossed headfirst to hang over your son's shoulder without any by your leave, Cyrus supposed. Ten bounds were enough to cross the distance to his ultimate destination and by the eighth he'd summoned Jondalar's dagger from his boot again and gripped it tight in his right hand, tip pointed down with _Greater Magic Weapon_ still active since being cast not that much earlier.

35%

Feet left the ground with a running leap, landed on the oblique face of the carven waypoint, made two vertical steps before footing started to slip – _stab down into granite all the way to the hilt –_ then he hurled himself further upwards to restore his forward momentum and kept going even as the surface got more and more vertical.

30%

His muscles _burned_ and ached from the strain but he'd shouldered through slashes, stabbing and being nearly burned alive not much earlier – _skin blistered with every stretch and had peeled off in several places, fire eating through the cotton –_ so he pushed through this time too, shoving aside impending muscle failure each time he pulled the dagger out and used it as a climbing pick every third step.

25%

One, two, three – _pull dagger out, stab down again_ – one, two, three – _pull out, stab down_ – one, two, three – _pull, stab_ – rinse and repeat until he was near the top.

10%

Then he was nearly there, so he left the dagger buried in rock to use as a foothold – _prestidigitation to glue the other sole to the facet –_ reached back to Sightless and jerked his thumb against its guard suddenly to propel it out of the scabbard and outward. The weapon obligingly did as momentum dictated, then hovered languidly for a moment before gravity ensured the expected outcome and the greatsword fell hilt-first into his hand – _Magic Weapon to give the existing enhancement just the right push_ – only to be driven tip-first into the pyramidal tip of the obelisk until it breached the other side at a slight upward angle.

11%

 _Murder/death/kill_ had escaped the inferno and was coming south with lover in tow. But they were heading vaguely south-southeast away from them, so they probably weren't why the odds went up. Sending spells, then, calling whoever was prowling the southern side of the forest to rendezvous with them.

12%

Not much time left then. Lift foot off Jondalar's dagger to hook the heel around the sword guard – _banish the temporary glue on left sole_ – heave up in one bound and settle the other foot on the far side of the tip of the obelisk, right on the blade of Sightless. The posture was somewhat uneven, with his higher, left leg bent half-way as if still mid-climb, but that only meant he could make Father somewhat comfortable – _transfer him back to both arms, settle him with your bent knee underneath both of his, upper body and head supported with both arms to keep him best shielded_ – while he took a slow breath and focused on _Silent Image_.

Illusory light melded into view all around them, wrapped over them and the obelisk below, then finally settled into an illusion of the large waypoint being two meters taller than it really was, effectively concealing Cyrus and Gorion from all types of normal sight.

0%

He could have relaxed. _Should_ have relaxed, but instead he took a slow breath and craned his neck to look east where his would-be kinslayer would inevitably emerge, a seething mass of rage and conflicting emotions over losing his sword, losing his intended quarry and losing/ not losingTamoko. Cyrus couldn't really feel any of that from that distance, but he always knew when someone wanted to kill him and the rest had come through bright and clear at one or several points during their short battle.

"…Son?"

"Quiet," he hissed, reflexively tucking Gorion's head closer to his collarbone even though he refused to look away from the point on the road ahead. Gorion's soul-light was a mess of resigned hopelessness and hopeful despair and whatever passed between them, as if those combinations were supposed to make any sort of sense. But still he didn't look away from the road ahead. Not throughout the minutes it took for Sarevok and Tamoko to emerge from the forest a couple hundred yards away. Not during the exchange between the two of them and the duo of human wizard and human warrior that appeared from the south across the road from them. And especially not during the few moments when Sarevok and the mage – _too far away to read in any way available at the moment_ – looked around and peered up the road in their direction, though they never sought to look for them higher than ground-level. Even so, the odds seemed poised to rise at several points, and if they decided to divine or cast dispellings randomly Cyrus didn't know what he would do, but the mage seemed to talk Sarevok Anchev down from whatever course of action he was considering.

The four teleported away moments later, after another all-purpose glare sent to the road and the forest still on fire, and Cyrus just _had_ to wonder why they hadn't just teleported away to the Friendly Arm Inn. The wards preventing that only reached a mile or so around the keep, not 25.

Leaving that aside for later, Cyrus allowed himself to breathe out and look down at his father's face.

The man should have looked comical, held like a newly-wed bride by a young dwarf while he stood on top of the world. Or however close one could get physically, based on narrative convention. Other than the top of a mountain, the very top of a huge obelisk of rock was a good second choice, especially on flatlands. The burning forest behind them and the smoke lifting up and covering the star-lit sky in a thick blanket of smog was the only problem with that whole picture, or so Imoen would have said.

Until she saw Gorion's face. The face of a man who had no idea what to think or even if he should risk a hope believing anything, so he only gazed at the most important thing in the world and tried and tried to decide if he should or shouldn't trust his own eyes.

He didn't. "I'm not sure I believe this…" The old man murmured, haltingly reaching for his son's face with his right arm, almost withdrawing before he nevertheless dared to touch it. Something cracked in his eyes. "I'm not sure I believe this… perhaps this is all a dream…" His hand slid down his face until it rested on his shoulder the man sunk his face in the crook of his neck. "The final fantasy of a dying man. Such sweet, beautiful dreams that they are…"

Alien disdain, mockery and _rage_ rose up in Cyrus until he felt like he was going to rip the man in half and he only barely managed to bull through the feeling before he did more than hold Gorion tighter. But to speak he didn't trust himself, not after that. Especially not with the feeling refusing to abate, staying as it was on the verge of bursting out through his skin. What… Had he felt anger of his own at all? Had the cursed Vestige capitalized on the similarity between emotions, however minuscule, and used it as a means to impose a hold?

What _was_ it that seemingly made him so much more appealing to that depraved consciousness that it would be so focused on him?

Cyrus decided not to think about it, instead looking up at the far southern sky and kept looking at it throughout the night. Gorion didn't speak to him again until morning. Perhaps he might have cried if he were anyone else but it had been long since he'd still had any tears left to shed. He didn't fall asleep either though. Just clung to his son throughout the night, trembling from too much emotion now and then but not saying anything.

The urge to _murder/death/kill_ didn't diminish either, even after that barely averted episode of whatever it was.

It was near dawn that the young dwarf was willing to finally climb down. Though he might have taken even longer if the wind hadn't shifted and turned the smoke of the _still_ ongoing and much worsened forest fire behind them. If not for the greenish haze still trying to supplant his blood and his mind, he might even have bothered hoping it wouldn't reach the Cloakwood because the druids would go absolutely mental if that happened. Then they would have words to say to everyone from "civilisation."

The climb down went somewhat more jerkily than the one up, mostly because the dwarf had to fight down a new set of patricidal impulses when he laid hands on the sword and dagger he'd used as footholds and handholds. Somehow, mostly by focusing on Gorion's much less hopeless soul-light, he was able to bull through them until they were both back on the ground.

Then the young man hastily withdrew several feet – after _very_ carefully setting his father back on his feet of course – and started massaging his temples and breathing deeply and slowly in an attempt to tell the Bhaaltaint to go sit in a corner and be quiet.

He reached into his left pocket for two of the magic stones whose 24-hour duration hadn't expired and begun palm-spinning them, something he frequently did as a focusing exercise.

He kept control for around a minute and even so only managed to keep the simmer internal, rather than suppress it. And he didn't dare peak out or explain why he was holding his eyes shut and rubbing circles into his temple with the hand not occupied while facing as far away from his Father as possible. He didn't trust what would come out of his mouth. But he'd just have to keep his will focused until it passed. It would pass eventually. It had to-

"Son-"

 _Rip, tear, kill, do it now, do it_ _**because I said so** _ _-_

UNACCEPTABLE.

With the second snarl of his life, however silent, he grabbed a mental hold of the Bhaaltaint, summoned the most vivid memories of every beautiful light that had ever shone from his Father in the past and stabbed Bhaal with the light of the memory, feeling and everything pleasant in life right in the eyes.

Or as well as he could imagine it happen given that he was working against some formless, ambiguously self-aware… thing. He called on the memory of the woman who fancied herself good at killing infants but really wasn't as reference.

The patricidal drive didn't disappear but it did jerk and simmer down somewhat. And it seemed to be dropping, slowly but surely, so if he just kept a focus on it for the next few minutes-

"Son, what's wrong?"

Father.

Worried. Distressed.

No more focus at all.

And suddenly the truth wanted out as well. "What the hell, old man!?" Cyrus roared as he whirled around, sending his approaching father stumbling backwards in utter surprise. "Did everything I said throughout the entirety of yesterday not matter at all?" Gorion's soul flickered as if blowing through by some storm but confusion seemed to rule most everything, even the lingering terror of the night prior. "Is dying the best you think you can do for me? You've spent the past 10 years doing all you could to convince me I deserve to live as much as everyone else only to turn around and say you're not worth the same consideration! Have you been a hypocrite all your life or have I finally driven you mad!?" The white-haired old man reared as if slapped but his soul seemed to read only more and more astonishment with every word out of his son's mouth. "Do you think that my handful of moments of assertiveness mean I'm actually ready to get by without you!?" Gorion stepped even further back from his advance. "Has it missed your notice that if not for you I would have long ago gone off the deep end!?" Because he'd apparently advanced on him. "The only reason I haven't is because of you! The only reason I ever bothered trying to puzzle out the idea of morality in the first place, let alone anything resembling a worthwhile one, was you! The only reason I get up in the morning and do anything worthwhile with this dead husk of a soul of mine is because you think I'm worth my best! That I'm worth _your_ best!" His voice cracked like it only had once before and some unfamiliar feeling showed on his own face before it disappeared as soon as he thought about it, along with any uncertainty in his livid voice. "Did you somehow miss the fact that the only reason I _have_ reason is because of you!?" Gorion was by now outright gaping at him but the rant wanted out. Entirely. "You, old man! Not mother, not Imoen, not Tethtoril, not Khelben Arunsun, not the Watchers, not anyone else!" The dwarf was close enough so he jabbed his father in the chest with a finger. "YOU!"

There was only deathly silence then in the middle of the Lion's Way road 25 miles from the Library Fortress of Candlekeep. Crackling fire from the burning forest not that far away notwithstanding.

Cyrus realized he was actually gasping from the diatribe that had just come spilling out, and that the Bhaaltaint seemed to be recovering from some shock or other that had sent it reeling for whatever cause at some point during that uncommon emotional outburst. Though he wasn't sure "uncommon' was a strong enough word for something that had only happened one other time in 20 years.

20 years that appeared to be culminating in the most unexpected and colourful display of brilliance suddenly pouring forth from his Father's spirit as if he'd just been witness to the most wondrous of events. "The first time in your life that you become truly angry, and it's on behalf of someone else." The old sage spoke with nothing but wonderment, and that lavender-white aura forming around the star behind his realm-self was of the sort that blew right past the bleak/dark/nothing and made Bhaal give up his tantrum and back off, even if he didn't outright flee. "On behalf of me..." Gorion reached up and claimed Cyrus's still outstretched hand in a warm, gentle hold. "And you still think you can't get by on your own." His smile turned wry, somewhat, but his soul shone stronger still. "I'm sorry son. But while I'm your father and I love you, following my example may not always be best. I have my own problems you see, chief among them being that I'll always consider you more important than I do myself." Cyrus was honestly baffled by how serenely he said that. Or how tenderly he could actually utter words. "My little prince." He reached out to cup his face as he murmured words most heartfelt. "My own little marvel."

It was at that precise moment that a certain wild mage nutcase suddenly teleported ten feet away from them.

Cyrus' face blanked.

"Finally! I've spent the past day looking for you!" The voice of the soon-to-be-corpse said. Soon-to-be- _dead_ -corpse since the man already looked like something that had crawled out of a hole. Then failed proper application of beautifying prestidigitation. Only Imoen would ever look good with hair as pink as that. "Greetings, young one! No doubt you're honoured to meet Rhialto the Marvelous."

A hand gripped on two magic stones enchanted to the Abyss and back.

"Ah yes, you are perfect. Be honoured, young one, for your existence now has a purpose: Rhialto the Marvelous needs your spleen."

Gorion slowly turned his head to look at the Wild Mage nutcase with the sort of stare he simply _had_ to have copied from Cyrus himself at some point in time.

"It will be the final component for the greatest spell that was worked since, well, since ever! Of course, it needs to be extracted while you're still alive, otherwise it would be worthless as an ingredient."

One of the magic stones crumbled from the sheer pressure of the grip in defiance of all possible logic. A faint, greenish-haze seemed to accompany the dust. A greenish haze much like the one encroaching on Cyrus' vision.

"But it won't be too painful... Well, at least it won't take too long. Rhialto the Marvelous is a very experienced surgeon, it will only take an hour or two..." The pink-haired human brandished a large athame or other and his left hand moved as if to cast a spell.

Cyrus looked up from the single remaining magic stone not in his pocket and looked at the thoroughly self-absorbed Wild Mage who'd sent those two imbeciles into Candlekeep the day before. The imbeciles that essentially convinced Tethtoril, Therabho and everyone else of relevance to go along with the urging of whoever had sent Gorion letters rather than try to convince the man to put departure off for one more day, if only to get Cyrus something better to wear and use on the road.

Cyrus gazed at the person ultimately responsible for Gorion leaving Candlekeep as soon as possible rather than as soon as _prudently_ possible only to run into _death_ the very same night and nearly not make it out alive at all.

Then he saw red.


	7. Vagaries and Vicissitudes

"Urgency! Urgency!"

Hope was soul with light untarnished so bright as to break through red haze, send maniac of a Vestige reeling flash-blind even as her physical ream-self charged out of the woods and dawn shade.

"Beasts! Fire! Murder!"

Hope was cries of help and danger yelled in accent most ridiculous.

"Oh woe! Oh _woe_! Woe Us, that We shouldst suffer such grievous a blow to Our temerity!" Hope was pink-haired, pink-cloaked woman running hastily right at them, near-toppling after slipping on a loose road rock, flailing helplessly and gasping in fright and (not) tiredness as she caught herself and proceeded to continue charging in their direction.

"Gods bless you, master mage!" She cried out as she launched herself at Rhialto the Fabulous. "For surely 'twas thine foresight that saved Our life and dignity!" She draped herself all over his arm and whatever other parts of him were within reach. "Dumb beasts of the forest would have surely outraged Our modesty with their smell and slobber!" Lithe arms hugged a knife-wielding arm to her bosom as the river of drama flowed free and unabated. "Useless escorts dared command Our person to flee! Command Us! The scandal! Rather than kneel and offer to carry Us as their place demanded! 'Tis an outrage!"

Hope was soul-light warm and calming to the point where red haze vanished and clenched fingers loosened from the iron grip on a magic stone that had gone sick-green and grown skin-skewering prickles.

"But now We are saved!" Hope declared in relief as she sniffled into the shoulder of the Wild Mage Nutcase. "We were so terrified but now… now…" She whimpered and suddenly swayed, hung nearly entirely on her male reflection in pink fashion who could only blink dumbly and only barely caught himself before collapsing under her sudden weight. It was all he could do to automatically bring his arms around to steady her, completely mind-blown by the sheer severity of what's this I don't even-

Cyrus couldn't exactly blame him. Gorion was in more or less the exact same state.

"Erm… yes," Rhialto the Fabulous (no matter that he called himself Marvelous or whatever else on specific days of the month) automatically agreed. He'd completely failed to register that his new burden had emerged from the part of the forest _not_ on fire. "Terrible business I'm sure, and you are obviously as honoured to meet Rhialto the Marvelous as our smaller friend here, but now-"

"Yes!" she wailed, leaning further into him, if it was possible. Loose hands, that one. "Now! Now is the time…" she trailed off, one sniff at a time.

"Time?" The Wild Mage gasped from the extra added weight, just narrowly avoiding crashing to the ground.

"Yes," she sniffled dully. "Time…" She craned her neck to gaze into the pink-haired mage's eyes. "Time for Our confession," she finished, doe-eyed.

"Oh my!" The human yelped, trying and failing to extricate himself. "A _confession_?" He yelped shrilly.

"Yes," the woman said, voice suddenly airy as if she was feeling faint. "The most earnest expression of Our feelings!" She allowed the flustered wild mage to disentangle himself, though she immediately leaned in far enough for him to reflexively lean back. "We simply _must_ tell you, you see…" She held up at eye level a small _Couch's Spadefoot_ Toad. A _live_ _Couch's Spadefoot_ Toad she had moments before taken out of the man's spell component pouch. "One _very important_ truth, master mage." Then she held up with her other hand a Rod of Dispelling. "We Bards are prone to trickery!"

The Rod of Dispelling she had _not_ pickpocketed off him - _stolen from some Candlekeep monk or other, no doubt, there were plenty to go around_ – activated as soon as she used it to touch the tiny toad right on the head.

The next moment she leapt backwards and threw the toad right at the mage's head. Perfect timing for the polymorphed creature to break out of its unnatural state and transform mid-air into the grey-furred, massive frame of a certain wolf so far beyond incandescently furious that the sheer _rage_ in its howling snarl would have bowled the mage over even if he hadn't literally landed on the man's face.

Rhialto the Marvelous crashed with a yowl, then he no longer voiced any sounds at all as the wolf known as Arawn proceeded to set upon his foe with an almost inspired level of savagery.

…

Well.

…

Seemed that the no-longer-alive-to-interrupt-meaningful-moments Wild Mage Nutcase would never again accidentally guide peoples' fathers to their early deaths.

Or would he? Cyrus narrowed his eyes at a certain object that had flown away after the ties affixing it to the man's belt broke loose. The dwarf tilted his head to avoid collateral blood splatter. Right then. Telekinesis to summon the very dead man's effects away from the… retribution going on. Prestidigitation to remove the gore that did reach his clothes. More prestidigitation to guide any subsequent splatter of blood and fleshy bits everywhere but him and Father.

Imoen could take care of herself.

Thunder rumbled in the background and the air seemed to move, chill and grow moist as if predicting rain. None of the three people still alive or the wolf still taking out his aggression acknowledged it. Not Gorion who was looking blankly at the… man on the ground. Not Imoen who was staring at the post-mortem mutilation in progress with face looking a bit greener around the gills than was normal for her. And not Cyrus whose hands finally held the two most meaningful items that had been carried in life by Rhialto the Fabulous.

The first was a garishly-coloured and decorated Spellbook.

The second was… a Teddy Bear.

"Now I am certain this is not a dream," Father uttered from beside him, eyes moving from the scene of bestial brutality to the children's comfort toy his son held. "My mind would never be able to conjure up something as random as this." Comfort toy that Rhialto the Fabulous had used for a very uncommon purpose.

Still used.

Cyrus narrowed his eyes at the first ever example of a means to circumvent death even after it technically happened. Phylacteries. What a roundabout method, he thought. And such an odd thing, too, trying the functionality to that of the spellbook itself. Not standard practice, the young dwarf was sure.

Unnaturally quick-forming clouds rumbled behind them, where the forest fire continued to rage on.

Cyrus ignored it, choosing instead to open the spellbook – _no wards to order_ _ **still**_ _, bizarrely enough, though considering the nature of the tie with the teddy bear perhaps it made sense_ – and proceeded to record each and every page of the deceptively thin book, storing spell after spell in his mind, many familiar, more still not familiar at all. The latter ones proved quite intriguing actually, given his own precarious history with Mystra's Weave.

Nahal's Reckless Dweomer, Mynoc's Irresistible Appeal (created a lasso of force rather than enchanting the mind, curiously), Random Spell I (exactly what it said in the name, based on the spell matrix) – Rodent Form (self-targeted polymorph, the madman apparently liked spending time as… a Jerboa apparently). There were plenty of other, familiar first-level spells as well but these others seemed to have been specifically designed to take advantage of the volatility of Wild Magic. Whatever else could be said about the man currently in process of exponentially increasing the space his body covered, he'd somehow pulled genius out of that madness.

Northwards and eastwards, the clouds broke into a deluge of rain that finally began to quench the smoking disaster that Gorion had inflicted upon nature. Cyrus didn't pay it any attention.

Chaos Shield, Aura of Power, Rhialto's Random Missiles (random number of up to 10 different magic missiles that traded force damage for random elemental or magical harm, very useful), Tyndal's Spatial Compressor (random short-range teleport? Fit the theme, he supposed) and the last level 2 wild magic spell was… summon wild horde. Of bunnies. Bunnies which were entirely useless, save for the fact that there was a 1 in 4 chance of them exploding in a fireball upon death. Huh.

The clouds had spread and come to the point where it rained all the way up to the nearest trees north of the road. Only that far, though. The three of them were perfectly dry and warm regardless, next to the obelisk as they were. How convenient. Not that it was a surprise, given the familiar soul star burning from within the human flying above the forest.

Random Spell II, Vile Word of Discord (ventriloquism and confusion combined together for the purpose of causing chaos among enemies it seemed).

The familiar form controlling the weather spell from above the forest jolted with shock/relief/joy and made for their direction, leaving the magic to do as it willed for however long it had left to last.

Corporeal Instability (liquefies the target… non-lethally. Somehow.), Glyph of Wild Magic (caused wild surges all over the place, much like he'd done… that one time, though without actually harming the Weave itself apparently). Page after page turned, one or two every second.

The mage in flight finally cleared the treeline and landed just feet away from Father. "Oh, thank Mystra!" Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun gasped, almost. "I feared the worst!"

Berrilium's Brilliant Bouquet. Created a bouquet of shining magical flowers that blinded everyone nearby.

"So did-" Gorion broke off, taken aback at being spontaneously hugged by the other man, however briefly. "So did I, for a time…"

Random Spell III.

"I take it they were not entirely unfounded concerns," the Archmage said with a carefully controlled voice after letting go. But he did not wait for Gorion to say more at that point, instead walking over to where Cyrus stood engrossed in the Spellbook.

Wildstrike caused enemy spellcasters' spells to result in wild surges for predetermined durations, Meece's Wildarmor was a nominal illusion (in actuality a means to interfere with causality and effectively neutralize or reduce all damage or effects from hostile actions of any kind).

Would Tethtoril give him a _second_ unlimited residence pass in Candlekeep if he went and donated this text-?

"Hey now," Khelben said, interrupting him by laying his hands on both shoulders. "I am aware that aloofness is a staple of royalty but I assumed we were past that stage, Little Prince."

That was another thing. It wasn't strange enough that the Watchers had somehow dreamed up some sort of conspiracy aimed against Cyrus back during Khelben's first visit. No, rumours just _had_ to start circulating and visitors could not resist speculating on the oddity of a dwarf living in Alaundo's fortress under the aegis of the strongest, most long-standing and influential of Candlekeep's higher-ups. A little boy who was even using the Watchers and many random members of the Avowed as bodyguards. Which was most definitely not the case – _really –_ but stories tended to take on a life of their own. And then he was twelve and his Father organised for him a semi-public birthday party during which it was all but confirmed that he was personally connected to the Watchers, First Reader Tethtoril, Thearabho and even Khelben Arunsun, of all people, and then Imoen just couldn't help it and called him a prince and, well…

Half or more of Candlekeep basically believed at this point that he was some dwarven prince being raised in seclusion. Never mind that dwarves just did not _do_ that. Never mind that political intrigue simply _did not happen_ among dwarves at all.

It did not help that everyone who knew better simply _had_ to get in on the fun and further propagated that entire story, both within the keep and among the many people who visited and inevitably took that story with them when they left…

Imoen had, naturally, milked her "personal connection to royalty" for all it was worth, especially during those 10 days when that Calishite Pasha was visiting and she decided she would flutter her eyelashes and "make with the noblesse oblige" at him for all relevant information about Calimshan, for she simply _had_ to get all available first-hand information for her book and she would use _all_ the tools and means available to her to do it because she would _not_ be denied, mark her words.

It was things like that, Cyrus mused thoughtfully, that could leave even the Vestige of a mad god reeling in the throes of incredulity to the point where it would forget to keep trying to push his offspring to random homicide.

The feeling returned as soon as he thought about it.

Damn.

"Hello, sir." Not much else to actually say really. "How are you?"

"How am I?" The man asked incredulously. "I find you and your father calmly beholding or alternatively ignoring the most brutal scene of bloodshed that this side of the Lion's Way road has seen in recent decades. And to compound the matter, you both look like a fire elemental rolled all over the both of you." The man bent forward to inspect his half-ruined clothing. Ah right, Cyrus had forgotten to cast any sort of mending cantrip, hadn't he? "Your skin is blistered and outright torn in places! Just how severe were you hurt and how recently?"

It was a pertinent question, Cyrus supposed, since he generally recovered from any wound in a night's rest. He healed quite quickly.

Perhaps quickness of action wasn't the _only_ natural advantage he had over Sarevok Anchev.

"We were not afforded the leisure to see to our post-battle wounds, teacher." He reached into his pocket to withdraw the Staff of Healing, which he enlarged immediately. "But I suppose now would be a good enough time to see to it." He used it to heal his injuries, then peered at Father – _surprised, believed the staff had been lost in the forest, immensely proud of him all over again –_ and used it on him as well before passing it to the Khelben, since he was closest.

The Archmage straightened with a sigh. "One of these days…" He pinched his nosebridge, then seemed to remember something and turned to Gorion. "Why are you even on the road? Did Elminster not send a message ahead?"

Elminster. So that's who it was.

Cyrus resumed reading even as he registered Gorion's soul-light painting with the shade of surprise. "Of course he did. That is why we are heading to the Friendly Arm Inn to begin with."

"Headed for…" The Archmage trailed off, aghast. "Mystra's mercy, _what did that man say to you_?"

Dweomer Warp (green ball of magic that surrounds casters in a field of ravaging weave-fire that harms proportionally to magical ability), Tyndal's Temporal Compressor (displaces self from normal timeflow, providing various protections) Random Spell IV, Sphere of Chaos, Hornung's Random Dispatcher, Summon Cow.

Summon Cow…

What.

"HE TOLD YOU TO LEAVE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!?" Khelben balked. Yelled loud enough to drown out the closing noises of the Arawn vs. Rhialto "confrontation" even. "He told you to travel by _night_!?"

"Gorion!" Blackstaff cut Father off just as he opened his mouth to reply. "Tell me _exactly_ what the man's message said." Pause. "Please."

Entropy Burst, Eye of the Beholder, Mynoc's Wild Spell Recuperation, Rary's Menmonic Negator. Another piece of evidence for Cyrus' theory that the Weave and/or Mystra was deliberately erasing spell knowledge if someone could invent a spell for it, and the opposite for that matter.

"Is that man completely mad!?" Khelben Blackstaff sputtered over the letter Gorion had handed him. He only got more riled up as he read it. "'We have been a touch too sheltering? I urge you to lave Candlekeep this very night? A moving target is much harder to hit?'" Khelbern was becoming more and more astonished and outraged the more he read. "'We have done what we can for the one in thy care? The time nears when we must step back and let matters take what course they will!?'" Khelben growled. "I did _not_ agree with this and made it clear to the relevant parties." Thundered struck in the background at his angry resolution. An interesting side benefit for a spell of Control Weather.

Wild Sphere, Wildfire to spontaneously cast any known spell of level 8 or lower, Entropy Shield to removes the "Reckless" in Nahal's Reckless Dweomer (useful).

"Watcha reading?" Imoen asked, looking at the book over his left shoulder and frowning. Unfortunately for her curiosity, that was the moment he finished the last page and the Spellbook of Rhialto the Fabulous disappeared into thin air. "No fair!"

The other two men did not notice. "Clearly, his urgings did more harm than good," the Blackstaff said lowly, eyes tightening the slightest bit. "I am honestly perplexed. Elminster should have known well enough that I would be coming, seeing as _I said so to his face_."

"Perhaps he assumed you would be too busy with Prince Haedrak to come immediately?" Gorion asked falteringly. "His highness is raising an army and arranging for a fleet in Waterdeep as we speak, is he not? In anticipation of the Tethyr campaign to assist Queen Zaranda-"

"Which I am in no way involved with directly at present since my part at this stage is already done." Whatever that meant. "And I would have prioritised this even had that not been the case."

"Truly? Is the Iron Crisis so severe an issue? I thought Jaheira and Khalid were already investigating-"

"By Mystra, the Iron Crisis is not what I meant! And even if it were, I would _still_ have prioritised this _because you two live here_!"

There was a surprised silence, on both their parts. One because he hadn't expected that to be said and one because he hadn't expected to come out and outright say it.

Arunsun sighed and gripped the Blackstaff in a tight grip. "Gods' sakes, old friend, you could not wait one more day? Curse me for not using a Sending. None of this would have happened then." The Archmage stopped and realized he had no idea what 'what' was. "What _did_ happen out there?"

Gorion begun giving a concise rundown of the past 24 hours but Cyrus didn't much care right now. No, he cared more about the building power in the Teddy Bear.

The _phylactery_ embedded inside the teddy bear.

He preemptively turned to face the direction of the two men still deep in talk.

"Well, seems like your puppy's done using mister fashion victim as a chew toy," Imoen jested next to him.

She was right. Arawn had indeed finished rending the man apart limb from limb, then limb piece from limb piece. The wolf slowly backed away from the… mage all over the place, growling menacingly all the while. Then he – _Prestidigitation to clean off all the blood_ – rubbed himself around Cyrus a few times while his self-light – _an odd, sapience-less haze of few varieties_ – somehow depicted angry embarrassment. He then bared his teeth at the… mage covering the majority of the road three-some meters away and resumed growling even as Cyrus petted him on the head. The head that was as high as his own. "Good boy," it was the proper way to endorse good behaviour, Cyrus had heard. Trial and error seemed to bear that out. "Next time try not to get yourself turned into a spell component to begin with, though."

Arawn produced an insulted half-whine-half-growl but didn't back away.

Which was when the Teddy Bear of protection +2, +3 vs. Demons flew out of Cyrus' hand, disappeared in a colourful display of pyrotechnics and left behind the form of the pink-haired, garishly-dressed human that had just been turned into a literal smear. Perhaps he wasn't really a human anymore. A Lich with attachment to his non-existent physical beauty then?

"So we meet again..." The deranged wild mage proclaimed loudly, not seeming to notice Father and Khelben Arunsun staring in incredulity from mere meters behind him. Which had been the whole point of turning to face them in the first place, so that the revived man would have his back to them when the death-evading purpose of the Teddy Bear phylactery were achieved.

He did see Imoen though. "You seem to have grown more self-confident since Rhialto the Marvelous had his little accident, treacherous wench!" Then his eyes turned to Cyrus. "And you! It is just fitting that you, who caused his downfall by luring him into an ambush with your alluring spleen, brought Rhialto back to life!"

Because in reading the book and storing the spells in his memory had enacted a 'secret' spell of its own that activated the previously-cast reincarnation-by-Wish contingency embedded in the Teddy Bear.

It seemed his life truly could turn this bizarre, Cyrus thought darkly. _Really_ darkly, since the Bhaaltaint was practically egging him on to _rip/tear/kill/destroy the Teddy Bear right in front of the man's eyes_. Never mind that said Teddy bear had just been consumed as a spell component.

Then again, no one had ever accused Bhaal of being sane.

Clearly, neither was Rhialto the Fabulous, or whatever he was calling himself this week. "But to do this, you had to read Rhialto's spellbook. Rhialto the Marvelous really doesn't like it when someone touches his things!"

"You are absolutely right," Cyrus said suddenly, ignoring the way magic gathered ominously in the background. Khelben and Gorion – the latter of whom hadn't even had a chance to replenish his spellcasting list but did not let that stop him from coming up with something – were supremely _displeased_ with the threats against the young dwarf's person. Casually as if meeting an acquaintance, Cyrus grabbed the man's hand and shook it as if in greeting. "No one should touch the possessions of Rhialto the Marvelous. Which is why I've decided this should be yours." Then he turned the bemused mage's hand palm up, dropped the spiky magic stone on it, forced the man's fingers closed around it and _squeezed._

Cyrus stepped away to give the Wild Mage space as he howled in pain at his hand being skewered all over, then screamed even harder as the unintended disintegration effect forced into it by overeager Bhaaltaint turned his hand to dust along with the prickled stone itself, only to work its way up all the way to the elbow before finally stopping.

It only lasted moments, but by the end of it the man had fallen to his knees right in front of a suspiciously silent member of the canine kingdom.

There was a moment of silence.

Then Arawn set upon his foe with a literally unparalleled degree of savagery.

…

Well.

That takes care of that. Now to repeat the earlier feat of reclaiming the spellbook by means of Prestidigitation. Father and teacher would not doubt find the contents fascinating.

"Oh for the love of…" Khelben muttered with his face in his palm, sounding every bit the part of the near-1000-year-old man who was completely _done_ with this nonsense. "Magic, these days! Nothing but a race between wizards striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof spells, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots."

"Yes," Gorion said from beside him, nodding grimly. "Clearly, the Universe is winning."

Cyrus completely agreed. It was supremely improbable for a mage capable of casting 9th level spells to walk around with no contingencies or defences other than those just exhibited, to the point that a normal wolf could take them out unawares.

"Well don't you worry none!" Hope proclaimed grandly with a swoop of her pink cloak. "Imoen the Magnificent came here to save the day! Which she did!"

"Yes, you _are_ here indeed," Gorion said with eyes narrowed. "When you were specifically told to stay at the keep. Repeatedly, I might add. By several different people. And here you are, sneaking out and jumping into trouble without any sort of forethought."

"I'll have you know that there was _nothing_ lacking forethought about my timely arrival!" Little sister declared, the perfect picture of personal offense in progress.

Then she seemed to realise what she said. It did not help that the other two pairs of eyes belonging to thinking beings there also zeroed in on her.

It only made her scowl and cross her arms with a huff. "Well, there wasn't! I had everything under control!"

Which said nothing of anything that came previously.

Something Gorion picked up on as well, naturally. "Because clearly, the fact that you are here at all says nothing about the life-threatening methods you must have used to sneak out of the keep without being seen or stopped," Gorion challenged, approaching and looking down with stern eyes. "Or the fact that you knew when and where to emerge running and screaming. Or how you knew where Cyrus' animal companion had been stashed, or that he had been polymorphed and captured at all. Clearly, _nothing_ occurred over the past 24 hours that would have sent me into heart-stopping worry had I been present or even aware of your doings."

The short, sarcastic speech almost managed to make Imoen succumb to contrition – she never did like to upset Gorion or Winthrop, especially worry them even though she didn't care much about the reactions of most people – but she rallied admirably. "You can't prove anything!"

"Oh no?" Gorion challenged, eyebrow climbing. "So the fact that-"

"I did _not_ sneak out of Candlekeep using the holds Cyrus carved in the wall facing the sea years ago!" Imoen cut him off with an insulted glare. "I did _not_ then proceed to make my way to the wolf cave to see if the Big Bad Wolf was there, only to find he was not and go on my way. I also did _not_ then proceed to mingle with the departing seekers only to sneak out and go into the woods the same way you did. For that matter, I did _not_ get horribly lost and end up in the woods south of here without ever noticing when I crossed the road! Nor did I happen to climb a tree for orientation just in time for mister fashion victim to show up and run into large, angry and fanged over there only to turn him into a toad the moment woofy tried to jump him." Imoen sniffed, turned her head away in disgust and flicked her right hand at the two older men dismissively. "So you see, I could _not_ have been in any position to then tail mister fashion victim the entire night until he finally spotted you and decided to cover the remaining 100 feet with a targeted teleportation spell in defiance of all common sense." The young woman put a hand on her hip and looked at the mess still in progress. "Honestly, why he didn't just do that from the start I have no idea."

Why did madmen do anything? They're madmen, that's why.

 _Crunch_ goes the wild mage.

"Wow," Imoen said, sounding rather astonished now, if not quite as green as before while staring at Arawn taking out his well-earned aggression. Again. "He must be _really_ mad at being turned into a mini toad when he was just trying to take out a threat to you to spare you the danger." There was an awkward pause. It could not be called silence when flesh-ripping and bone-popping noises filled the immediate area. "And I will take this chance to reaffirm that my being here and successfully planning and executing Cyrus' rescue by means of angry puppy is _nothing_ but a fortuitous coincidence!"

Gorion sighed. "Child-"

"That's my story and I'm sticking with it!"

"Oh, that is it!" Khelben grunted, striking Blackstaff against the ground to get everyone's attention. "Clearly, the best laid plans of 'relevant parties' have proven, as our Little Prince there would no doubt say, supremely suboptimal." Yes, that was exactly what Cyrus would say about them. "Therefore, clearly, the only logical thing to do is to do away with them entirely and start over from the beginning. Which means, before anything else, going back to Candlekeep and-"

"No."

The conjured rain poured violently twenty meters away and smoke still rose in the sky from scattered pockets here and there, mixing with the clouds.

Cyrus almost never said anything unless prompted.

Which made the rare times exponentially more effective.

"That…" Gorion said slowly, "is a total reversal of what you would have said yesterday."

"Yes." _Rip/tear/kill/ tear them all_ _ **because I said so-**_

Shut up.

He closed his eyes and focused his entire attention on Imoen's soul-star.

Bhaal didn't go flash-blind this time but the Vestige did simmer down. Not because of _her_ but because Cyrus ability to summon faint echoes of the same light she shone with when he concentrated specifically enough.

"Explain," Khelben said.

Older half-brother. Chaosrend. Bhaaltaint reaction. Vestige. Aware. Proactive. Enchantment plan part turned into new fallback. Compulsion Cyrus was liable to fall under the closer he got back to Candlekeep where all the stored essence was.

Cyrus explained.

There were no words for the distress that coloured Gorion's emotional foundation, or the grim countenance that overcame Khelben as he listened. And both men were outraged on his behalf. Incensed even, though Gorion's feelings were naturally more intense given the special relationship between son and father. Or so Cyrus had been assured by Hull and others. Repeatedly.

Nor were there any words for a time after he finished. Even Arawn cut his righteous vengeance short and padded over to – _prestidigitation to clean off the blood_ – rub his head against his upper arm.

"Well sod and bother," Imoen blurted, finally. "You're one of Bhaal's kids?"

Cyrus blinked owlishly at her as Gorion and Khelben jerked in place, startled externally and internally alike. "Wait, you don't know?" He asked. "How can you _not_ know?"

Because it begged asking.

"Well how should I?" She asked defensively. "It's not like you scream 'creepy godspawn here, think happy thoughts' is it?" She stopped and reviewed what she said, then gave him a more thorough look as she thought back. "Actually, you kind of do now that I think about it. Huh." A beat. "But that doesn't mean I was supposed to automatically think you're one of what those chanters harp about at least once a day!" Another beat. "Although the way you matured by the age of 20 instead of 50 _is_ kind of weird in hindsight. And the way you just _know_ things by looking at people. And everyone knows at least some rumours about what went on in the Tower of Exaltation…" She trailed off. "You know… now I'm feeling kind of dumb for _not_ thinking about it, at least in passing."

"Indeed," Gorion said tiredly. "You certainly came up with every other outlandish explanation if history is anything to go by."

"Exactly!" Imoen agreed readily. "It's all your fault!" She pointed at Gorion with all the relief of someone who'd learned she could shove the blame on someone else. "You and everyone else did everything you could to keep it a secret too! Even in your personal letters! There was barely a hint even in the scroll on your desk that I snuck in to read last night!" Imoen froze at the slip, and the way everyone stared at her. Gorion's mouth had even slipped open. Slightly, but it was no small thing. "Oh, did I just say that? No, of course I didn't. Nope, no sneaking to be had here, move on move on."

"Oh Mystra, give me wisdom and patience," Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun despaired openly. "For I will surely be forced into exile from the shame of traveling alongside such a large ham of a student."

"I resent that remark!" Imoen cried out. "… And I'm not your student."

"As of now, you are," the man declared with total finality before turning away and dismissing her entirely.

Which, naturally, was the wrong thing to do. Or the right one, if you wanted her to pay you attention, which Cyrus could well see was the case here. "Wait what!?" Imoen yelled. "Don't turn your back on me, mister! I've only just _begun_ to talk!"

The four of them left soon after, once Khelben had checked the two of them over one more time and created some new clothes for Cyrus to put on since his old ones had been cut, torn or burned almost everywhere. Imoen tried to bark, chatter, natter, wheedle and otherwise squeeze Khelben for an answer about what he was talking about, because she was just _fine_ thank you very much and she wanted _nothing_ to learn from him unless he intended to teach her cool magic spells that Gorion refused to share, in which case she could perhaps be persuaded to allow such a peace offering and could she start with something cooler than Snilloc's Snowball this time, pleeeeaaase?

Cyrus did not have it in him to tell her that the man probably only intended to keep her distracted from Cyrus in case something she said or did set him off. Not that he wouldn't live up to his word but teaching her to get by on the road would qualify as much as anything else could and then his word would bind him no longer. After a while, Khelben pretended to fold under Imoen's constant nagging and begun teaching her "all things relevant when traveling" starting with how to go about without drawing attention. Which revolved around exercising discretion, to start with. Easy to do when you had a cloak covering most of you and had access to cantrips that could leave you looking drab and unremarkable whenever you wanted. Khelben even demonstrated that on himself, and did it with just the right amount of condescension that Imoen was outraged at being talked down to and proceeded to demonstrate her mastery of such skills because she was the one who'd _written_ the book on Prestidigitation, thank you very much! She'll show'im!

She kept showing him until they reached the crossroad between the North and South Roads, then got bored and proceeded to drag Cyrus ahead because 'the old guys were boring' and looked like they had stuff to talk about that the two of them would be better off eavesdropping on. A plan that failed soon after, since they reached a road curve which briefly had the groups of two out of sight of each other.

It was unfortunate chance (though not for them) that an old passerby chose that precise moment to approach them. Dressed in a red but otherwise drab robe the old man had a weathered face, a long grey beard, a hawk-like nose and alert dancing blue-grey eyes. He was also smoking a meerschaum pipe that was giving off a blue-green, vile-smelling smoke. The man's nondescript-looking clothes were enchanted to unreasonable levels but ultimately just as vulnerable to the _stillness_ of death as every other spell and ward Cyrus had ever run into and _stilled_ into ineffectuality when there was nothing else to distract him. Ineffectuality like the one he'd just imposed on the lower half of the man's robes and trousers.

"Ho there, young one. Stay thy course a moment to indulge an old man."

Cyrus Anwar looked in the eyes of Elminster Aumar. The man who had sent Gorion the message that ultimately compelled him to leave as soon as possible rather than as soon as _prudently_ possible, only to run into _death_ that same night and nearly not make it out at all.

Then he kicked him in the shin.


	8. Natural 1

"YEOWCH!"

Elminster Aumar squawked in pain, hopped back despite himself and made to grab his shin – _**stillness**_ _on the never-trip enchantment! –_ only to catch his heel on the hem of his own robe, lose his balance and land on his buttocks with a yelp/grunt/huff in the middle of the road.

The first immediate effect of that abrupt turn of events was a small cloud of dust.

The _second_ immediate effect was the whole world staggering in mortified shock a couple dozen meters behind Cyrus Anwar where Father and teacher had emerged from around the bend just in time to see the first effect come about.

Then Cyrus reached out to catch the Archmage's airborne pipe…

"Pffffffffhhahahahahahahah!"… and Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun burst into side-splitting laughter. Complete, unrestrained, balance-shattering laughter. "Hahha… hahahaha… hahahahahahah!" Literally the sort of hysterical laughter that prevented one from standing upright. The man outright fell on Gorion and proceeded to laugh himself to tears in the gaping monk's shoulder. "Thhhheehehehahahahahahah!" He had to outright bear hug poor Father to avoid experiencing the same fate as the only other old man in sight.

It was times like this, Cyrus mused thoughtfully, that should have made him regret his inability to feel all but the faintest imitations of emotions let alone heart-lifting amusement. Unfortunately, he wasn't any more capable of feeling regret than he was amusement or anything else. Even the longing he used to experience when he was a child seemed to emerge less and less these days. And with Bhaal basically clawing at his mind to _rip/tear/kill/butcher_ for the past 12 hours…

He contemplated the item in his hand.

Analyse Dweomer.

…

Huh. Nothing. The spell had worked just fine but still revealed nothing.

A minor artefact at the very least, then. Perhaps valuable enough materially or sentimentally to warrant a strong emotional response on the owner's part if misused or even properly used by someone else. An emotional response stronger, perhaps, than being literally kicked to the curb without warning or perceivable reason.

The moment loomed before him.

Then Cyrus Anwar stuck the pipe's stem in his mouth and inhaled a long, chest-deep pull of smoke. Thick greenish grey, terribly foul-smelling smoke laced with twinkling sparks.

He'd have expected to choke, perhaps devolve into terrible coughing or even some magical curse to be inflicted upon him. This was, after all, meant to mark the point where he finally started once again living dangerously by his own choice rather than being driven or pulled into it like the day and night before. He'd even planned out his response to the pipe's owner deciding the world would be better off without him, like Khelben Arunsun had chosen to think so long ago.

Instead, he felt himself being enveloped by _Protection from Normal Missiles_ and _Magic Missile_ s _Reflection._ The only other effect of the smoke was to send the Bhaal Vestige bumbling drunkenly all through the whatever-it-was that harboured the world-encompassing ocean of blood in whose deeps his soul had drowned. Only momentarily, but still.

The young dwarf slowly exhaled the sparkling smoke and considered the implications. Hmm. Intended function of the pipe? Unlikely for too many reasons to bother listing. Hallucinogenic effect or actual glimpse into whatever metaphor fit whatever-it-was that defined his Bhaalite nature? Unintended side-benefit or just another instance of Bhaal experiencing a critical failure on his attempt to make sense of the things that his current subject of interest got himself into? Bhaal was supposed to have been a man himself, once, so that shouldn't happen so easily or often. Then again, what Imoen inflicted on him previously was probably a special case-

The pipe suddenly disappeared from his hand – _command word-activated return function?_ – and reappeared in that of the mightiest of Faerun's masters of arcane magic. The master of arcane magic who'd decided to cross his feet under him and sit right in the middle of the road, glaring crossly at Cyrus from beneath the brim of his pointed red hat.

The old man who happened to look his actual age – somewhat – used a cantrip to make his pipe sparkly clean – _rude, Cyrus wasn't infected or anything and he used mouth cleaning and breath-freshening cantrips regularly_ – then pointedly bit on the stem and drew a long whiff, never taking his menacing eyes off of him. His soul-self was a continuously flaring star of sparkling/hope/compassion that nevertheless gave off a fair bit of irritation/indignation/wrath.

Not that his affront was entirely aimed at the dwarf. There was a fair bit of it flaring in Khelben's direction too. The man still hadn't stopped laughing.

His one mistake was sparing Imoen the same glare.

"Cyruuuuus…" Imoen asked from beside him. Very slowly. "Why did you just kick a random old man to the curb?"

A couple of dozen meters behind, Khelben Blackstaff collapsed into helpless laughter all over again.

The dwarf couldn't exactly blame him, not with Imoen having proven that she thought on exactly the same wavelength as him. Kicked an old man to the curb indeed.

"I must admit to be wondering about that myself," Elminster grunted, sounding world-threateningly _irked_. He barely had to look up at Cyrus in order for his glare to pin him, despite sitting down. Interestingly, a flicker of consternation on Gorion's behalf broke through everything else, for a moment. "Kicking old men to the curb indeed!" And there was the third person thinking on the same wavelength. That idea about brilliant minds thinking alike was proven to be no myth. "Youth, these days! What has the world come to, honestly!?"

"The point where old men guide other old men into life-threatening situations which conclude with everything being _set on fire_ ," Cyrus said flatly, grinding those last three words out doubly slowly. "At which point the _youth_ of these days have to give the old men a good kick and literally carry them off into the distance."

Imoen gaped at him. Cyrus didn't turn to see but even her hard-to-read bright soul clearly transmitted mind-boggled incredulity.

Elminster's glare only narrowed, hiding the surprise/confusion/worry from showing physically. "Then allow me to provide ye with a piece of fair warning, young one." The Archmage reached into a fold in his robe and pulled out a staff – _just as unreadable as the pipe_ – which then floated out the rest of the way on its own, eventually settling vertically next to the man so that it could be used as a means for him to lever himself to his feet, which he did. "That one _kick_ thou canst consider free of charge." The mage leaned forward with a stern glare. "Anything else I'm afraid will come at a price." His shadow fell completely over Cyrus. Despite it being at a somewhat wrong angle in relation to the sun. "I strongly advise ye think well of what thou be willing to part with before thou try to grasp more than thou can handle. And perchance treat strangers with a touch more respect. At least until thou hast determined whether they are a threat and perhaps more powerful than they seem."

Behind the dwarf, one of the two men muttered something along the lines of 'oh _now_ he's done it' but Cyrus couldn't be sure which. Even if Khelben seemed to have calmed down for the most part, it was a bit too far away to hear perfectly.

Regardless, he knew exactly what to say. "How much credit will my father's life buy, then?"

Elminster's eyebrows disappeared under the brim of his hat.

"It was a serious question," Cyrus said lowly. He wondered if he should have told Arawn to stay close instead of loosing him into the woods to hunt after starving throughout his entire spell component-dom. Having a large hound growl in concert with him might have added a bit to the atmosphere, or so Imoen would say. "How much is my father's life worth to you, oh Elminster Aumar, great Sage of Shadowdale." Imoen gasped next to him but he wasn't done yet and he would have his say, especially with Father having finally disentangled himself from Khelben and nearly crossed the distance to where the three of them were. "You certainly didn't seem to think much of it in your letter to him, _or_ the opinions of others regarding _certain matters_."

"Son, that is-"

"Ah-AH!" The young dwarf whirled around and pointed a finger at his father, glaring him into silence. "You are _not_ allowed to have an opinion! Any input you would like to make is hereby rejected on account of unreliability by excessive altruism! 'Run child, get out of here' indeed!"

Stunned silence.

The second day of firsts in a row, that's what this was.

"Well!?" He snapped as he whirled back on Elminster Aumar, waving the man's missive in his face. The duplicate, to be specific, that he'd used prestidigitation to conjure while Khelben was reading it earlier when everyone assumed Cyrus was too neck-deep in wild magic spells to do or think about anything else. "'I urge you to leave Candlekeep this very night? A moving target is much harder to hit'? What is this, archery for dummies? 'Little option other than a leap of faith'? What is Khelben, then, a random encounter?" Elminster's light blurred with bemused surprise in all its shades as Cyrus had his second diatribe of the day. "'The time nears when we must step back and let matters take what course they will'? I suppose that's a new definition for Father _trying to kill himself last night!"_ He actually roared that point, channelling Bhaal's _rip/tear/kill/slaughter-them-all_ into his own misgivings despite whatever the Vestige may have wanted. The way both Elminster and Gorion internally recoiled at his anger was astonishingly similar even if the feelings of shock/guilt/shame were aimed at different people."And let's not forget _this_ particular gem." He tossed the letter at Elminster, who caught it reflexively even as he never moved his gaze from his. "'We have done what we can for the one in thy care.'" The young dwarf ground out. "The _one_ in thy care." He repeated, then gestured at the only other person his age there. "I suppose Imoen holds no worth of her own at all then."

Cyrus would have expected… well, he did not precisely know what he would have expected, but for the prominent emotion among everyone present to be startled confusion was not very high on his list. Only Elminster was different, and that was because something like comprehension was beginning to overtake his inner hues. _Inaccurate_ comprehension, that is.

"Hold there a moment," Khelben said… not _quite_ hoarsely but there was definitely a grain of evidence that he'd worked his lungs to their limits very recently. He'd joined the rest of them some time ago, after getting himself under control. "Lad… what are you saying?"

Cyrus blinked several times, unable to actually make sense of the conclusions he was drawing. "You mean… you don't _know?_ " Elminster's dawning certainty seemed to crash and burn but Cyrus was too preoccupied with the disbelief he, Father, Khelben and Imoen were all steadily filling with, each for a different reason. "How could you _not_ know?" Because it begged asking.

"Cyrus," Imoen said flatly. "I… You… This… You… This can't…" She opened her mouth a couple more times, then she slumped and the pink in her hair and cloak faded to auburn and dirt brown, respectively, in accordance with her drop in mood. "Fie you! I can't even make a half-hearted joke about you joking about a matter that isn't anything to be joked about because you've never said a joke in your life!" A storm cloud seemed to be settling over her as she folded in on herself. "Oh woe is me! That I shouldst learn of mine lineage in so banal a fashion!" What. "There wasn't even any build-up! You just… just…" She trailed off in despair as her inner light seemed to go all sorts of shades and directions.

"Imoen is _what?_ " Gorion asked, stunned. "I never… there never… She never showed any signs!"

"Ere now, mayhap we shouldst not assume anything too hastily," Elminster tried to intercede. "Let's say we ask the child why he believes what he does."

Khelben groaned. "There is no _believing_ involved with him, there never is."

"There were never any _signs!"_ Gorions stressed, looking between him and Imoen in distress. "Were there? Did I miss them because they were so much more blatant in…?" His soul that had been steadily filling with the joy of relief and hope for the future since the descent from the obelisk started to fail under the onset of guilt.

Bhaaltaint seemed to swell in satisfaction at the rising misery but Cyrus ignored it. " _She_ didn't show any signs? What about what _I_ showed then?" Because this, too, begged asking. "Why do you think I latched onto her in the first place?" Seeing that his questions were only hitting his father harder, the dwarf turned to Khelben Blackstaff. "Teacher," the man looked from Gorion to him. "Back during our first meeting when you decided to kill me while I was still young," Elminster's eyes snapped at the other Chosen of Mystra but it wasn't important. "You asked me what I thought justice was and I told you both that justice would have been for Imoen's soul and mine to have been switched at birth." Gorion's soul shuddered with remembered agony and Khelben's with pain, while Imoen's and Elminster's just started at the notion, one wholly and one just inside, both equally sharply. "Why would I _say_ such a thing if not-?"

"A murderbaby," Imoen uttered dully from aside, derailing everyone's attention but not noticing. "I'm a murderbaby." Her frown furrowed. "Explains why I wound up alone, although what are the odds of this situation even happening? I mean, just winding up in Candlekeep was completely accidental. A random encounter if ever there was one. Winthrop shouldn't even have noticed I pickpocketed him," she ended with a mutter. She looked up at Cyrus then. Or down. "So that's where your fixation with me came from. Not just from me being literally the only other person your age living in the fortress."

Cyrus stared at her. Hard.

"Okay, so I didn't notice anything weird about your fixation with me." A flat dwarvish blink. "Or that there was any fixation at all, fine," she groaned. "Oh, confusticate and bebother you dwarves! And you didn't just stop at being grumpy and humourless either, you just _had_ to be creepy enough that anything else just got swept under that rug instead of people actually noticing the signs for… well, whatever they were signs of." She finished lamely and she knew it but didn't care at the moment. "Speaking of which… why _didn't_ I show any signs? I mean, you _do_ pretty much glow with a strong 9 on the 1 to 10 weird-o-meter. Why don't I?"

"I can sincerely tell you that I have absolutely no idea whatsoever," Cyrus replied. "Seeing as I've been trying to figure out how to emulate… whatever it is." He paused. "I think it might have been arson."

Stares.

"What." Imoen said.

"The essence of Bhaal in you. It just looks like at some point in your life you somehow or other set it on fire." Cyrus shrugged. "But most healthy souls usually look like they're made of fire and light so…" He trailed off uncertaintly. "There are a _few_ specks of bleak darkness of nothing, but I can barely tell they're there most of the time."

No one seemed to know what to say at everything that had come to light over the past several minutes.

"I thought you both knew…" Cyrus finally told his Father and teacher. "You knew all about _me_."

"I thought it was because she was _happy_ ," Gorion said hoarsely, covering his eyes with a hand. "You saw her _free-spirited_ and _happy_ and you named her _Hope_ because she was everything you thought I wanted you to be since you never felt any emotion at all." The old man forcefully pulled himself together and dropped his hand, looking down at him with eyes ashine but still unable to weep, as he'd been for many years. "Even though I never wanted you to be anything or anyone but _you_."

"It wasn't just because she was free-spirited and _happy_ ," Cyrus said, dropping his head and sighing. "If that was enough I would have just latched onto Hull. Or any other Avowed that was free-spirited and happy." Some bone-deep weariness descended on him from nowhere. Or was it? Oh right, he hadn't slept in over a day and had spent the night standing on top of a stone pillar while holding his father in his arms throughout the night. _After_ fighting for his life and running through a forest fire, also for his life.

A new feeling that Cyrus had never felt from Khelben since he was 9 bloomed in Arunsun's soul. The boy looked up at him only to see the old Archmage glare down at Cyrus as crossly as Elminster had been, earlier. "We really, _really_ need to have a sit down and explore the meaning of that phrase known as 'volunteering information' _,_ Little Prince _."_

Elminster tossed Khelben a thoroughly surprised glance at the term of endearment.

"Like I volunteered information yesterday only to be dismissed?" Cyrus shot back, only for Gorion's inner light to dim just that slightest bit more. He bit back what he would have said next and tried to get the mounting murderous compulsions to simmer down as the onlookers gazed at him or each other looking lost (Gorion), conflicted (Imoen), weary (Khelben) and internally fascinated while outwardly contemplative (Elminster).

That last one _irked_ him. Especially since the look came from behind sparkling smoke rings. "Don't you give me that look!" he snapped at the Sage of Shadowdale. "I'm still cross with you! Everything I said still applies."

"If that is so," the mage replied mildly, "then everything others have said applies as well. Or art thou the only one due such consideration?" Never mind that he had not contributed to that conversation in the least, save for one terribly misinformed attempt at mediation. No doubt that was why he kept his wording impersonal.

Cyrus stared at the man, feeling the urge to hit him in the face this time though he was sure that was just Bhaal talking. Not the least of which because punching a near-demigod in the face from his height was unlikely to work to begin with.

He repressed the urge to mentally sketch out a step-by-step, blow-by-blow plan to bring the man to a more manageable height in preparation of following the urge to its conclusion. Real life would likely lead to the opposite result anyway, so it was all an academic exercise in the end.

Instead, Cyrus just gave his own thoughts voice, as usual when prompted by someone or other. "So let me see if I understand this correctly." He put his thoughts in order then proceeded to glare and gesture at everyone in turn as he spoke. "Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun tells you to your face that he intends to provide us an escort. But then _you_ send Father a letter urging him to leave _immediately_ in spite of that, making absolutely _no_ mention of him. Worse, you make it sound as if the two of us are on our own until we reach the Friendly Arm Inn, if we get there at all. Meanwhile, teacher forgets entirely to use a Sending to notify us of his intent to travel with us… for some reason. Then said teacher ends up delayed a whole day, again for some reason… Then Father decides to follow your advice to the letter in _spite_ of my misgivings and premonitions. _Then_ , because of those two imbeciles that the Wild Mage nutcase teleported into the keep," Elminster mouthed 'wild mage nutcase' but Cyrus would _not_ be interrupted here, "Tethtoril, Thearabho and everyone else with a stake in matters end up adding their weight to your bloody letter. The result of which is the two of us trying and failing miserably to skulk past dear older brother last night and Father dodging irrecoverable death literally by half an incantation syllable." The dwarf glared at the Sage of Shadowdale. "And here you are, the very next morning, traipsing about and approaching travellers on the road. Because gods forbid you come one day earlier, perhaps in sight of the Keep's gate to accompany us as Khelben intended to and now does, having fully expected father to leave as soon as _prudently_ possible rather than without any sort of grace period as you told him to." His words only became colder and more sceptical. "And let's not forget you live two countries away and other little bits and pieces of information, like the Tethyr business and how teacher had to teleport here. How you no doubt had to teleport here yourself. What would a day have cost you? And for that matter, what would _waiting_ a day have cost _us_?" Hindsight really was a capricious thing, sometimes. "And now, to put the final nail into the coffin of a truly terrible couple of days, I find out that, somehow, all _relevant parties_ completely missed the existence of a second, perfectly viable candidate for that ever elusive prophecy involving 'Gorion's Ward.'"

Three men and a young woman stared with varying degrees of… everything at the only dwarf among four humans.

"Finally, all of that is apparently due to… terrible coincidences and even more terrible skill at sending bloody messages?" Silence. "Did I get everything?"

By now Elminster Aumar was staring down at Cyrus Anwar with mouth slightly ajar and a soul casting the shades of frustrated/surprised/understanding all over the place.

Cyrus only felt irritated at the sight. But was this irritation even his, Cyrus wondered? Or was it just Bhaal's dark amusement projecting into… whatever he lacked that would have allowed him to feel as other did?

Bloody confusing was what it was.

The compulsion to _murder/death/kill-everyone-because-I-said-so_ returned as soon as he noticed it missing.

Dammit.

Sod this, he was going to actually ask Gorion why they didn't just teleport from the start, since the man obviously had the ability to cast spells of the required level. Unfortunately, Cyrus honestly no longer had it in him to care. "Oh, that is it," the dwarf said. "Clearly, the best laid plans of _relevant parties_ have proven supremely suboptimal, more so together than on their own. And no one can even be held responsible because it's ultimately a simple case of us all being complete idiots who critically failed at communication." He rubbed his face and ignored the reactions those words inflicted on all and sundry. "Honestly, the only one who can be said to have approached this whole matter with any degree of sense is Imoen."

"Score!" said young woman threw her arm in the air, only to be treated to incredulous stares from everyone, Cyrus included.

The dwarf surrendered to the impulse to rub both temples due to the compulsion-caused headache he could no longer stave off. "Right." He dropped both hands and took a deep breath. "We are going to walk off this whole disaster of a conversation. Then, when we're all calm and centred, we'll talk it out like adults and hug it out like the good friends and family we are. And _then_ , when we finally get to the Friendly Arm Inn or wherever else, we're going to do whatever we need to stop Bhaal from pushing me into committing patricide and/or random homicide as he's been actively trying to compell me towards since last night." That mess of 'volunteering information' over and done with, Cyrus Anwar turned around and set off down the North Road.

…

"Wait, what-"

"WE'RE GOING!"

They went.


	9. How to Fail at Adventuring

"Fairy tales _lied_ to me."

That came with the definition.

"They never tell about the boredom, the endless marching, the sore feet, the sweat, the sore feet, the exhaustion, and did I mention the sore feet?"

Yes she did and yes they do.

"They always made adventures sound so exciting and heroic."

Except when they told about princes who reach a land of immortality then feel homesick and leave the place only to drop dead once they get home and realize their kingdom faded to dust during the centuries they never noticed passing. Or when they told the story of a sirine who sees the love of her life marry another woman and then commits suicide in despair. Or when they spoke about a princess being married to a prince whose ogre mother kept hatching plots to have her for dinner. As the main course. Or when they recount the friendship between an abused sheepdog and a sparrow only for the dog to die run over by a trader's cart, prompting the sparrow to engineer a series of terrible events that ruin the man's life and ultimately premeditate the man's death at the hands of his wife who was just trying to kill the vengeful sparrow at the time.

But Cyrus probably shouldn't give Bhaal more ammunition. Especially not by thinking about the one where vain and spoiled young girl ends up dying of a happiness-induced heart attack after a Deva visits her with forgiveness for the events that led her to ask an executioner to chop off her feet in order to escape her ever-dancing Red Shoes and _rip/tear/kill/chop-their-feet-off_ so it looked like he had just outsmarted himself.

Dammit.

"And the past day had given me such high hopes too!" Imoen cried out before belatedly realizing what she implied. "And by that I in no way mean to imply that you being ambushed in the night and your dad nearly dying while trying to kill everyone nearby including you because of believing you'd already bit it was a good thing to have happening." The babbled apology only made her wince once she mentally tracked back. It did interesting things to her self-light. Embarrassment looked rather endearing (?) on her amidst all the merriment she always felt. "And I in no way mean to cast aspersions on you and your character either!" Imoen hasted to reassure Gorion.

"Rather late for that I'm afraid, child," Father said from where he was walking on Cyrus' other side. "Fortunately, it has been a long time since I felt moved enough by your antics to despair over your lack of tact." The flat response only made Imoen turn sour-faced. "Or the fact that said lack of tact only manifests when conversing with those closest to you, as opposed to total strangers."

"Hey!" Imoen cried out in outage. "That's not true!" Cyrus gave her a long side glance. He didn't even have to attempt any emotional mimicry either. "Well it's not!" Imoen huffed and turned away, crossing her arms. Then she suddenly whirled around and pointed at Elminster, "And you!" She shouted, ensuring that the two quietly talking Archmages were thoroughly distracted from their conversation. "That's not even proper Thespian! I can't believe you would mangle the holy language of us Bards to such a distressing degree!"

Elminster Aumar blinked a couple of times as he fiddled with the pipe he was drawing smoke out of. "A complaint well heard but not at all understood, I fear I must admit. What is it of mine speech that thou finds distressing?"

"That right there! That's not how it's supposed to sound at all!" The young woman cried, walking backwards but still pointing at the ancient man. "The _correct_ way is 'A complaint well heard but not at all und'rstood, I feareth I wilt admiteth. What is't about mineth speech yond thou finds distressing?' I honestly hope you've just been faking your terrible diction this whole time because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate!"

Puff puff went the pipe as inner light coloured all kinds of merriment. Elminster slowly blew out sparkling smoke – it formed in the shape of a rainbow-colored butterfly swarm that flew away – before answering. "Alas, I fear thine misgivings be wrongly funnelled, little lady. For mine is the noble speech of old come before thine bardish ways even arose. 'Tis the proper diction, mine, on which thine Thespian was based." The tone was the perfect mix of lecturing, indulgent and sympathetic to completely confuse Imoen as to how she should react. Fortunately for everyone involved – except perhaps her – the Archmage was kind enough to dispel said confusion immediately. "A pity, truly, that thine Thespian be a mere bastardised, unwieldy mockery of proper acting that was popularised solely due to a prank gone too far. A hoax by a talentless but overly charismatic performer of centuries past."

Imoen stopped dead in her tracks, stunned. The rest of them advanced nearly 10 paces by the time she recovered.

"Oh woe is me!" She ran all the way to the front where she proceeded to hug Cyrus and wail in his shoulder. The dwarf ended up literally dragging her along as he walked. "Oh woe is me! That I shouldst be thus misjudged and scorned! And while away from my comfort foods, even!" A new determination rose within her, wrapping her like a cloak of bravery as she detached herself and pointed into the distance. "That's it! Clearly, the only way forward is to take my fate in my own hands and make a wholly new comfort food for myself! She, at least, will never betray me!" Her proclamation caused Arawn to look back from ahead where he was marking the latest tree he chose as a waypoint. Imoen didn't notice. "It will be made from a mixture of milk and cream, combined with fruits or other ingredients and flavours. I shall sweeten it with sugar and flavourings and the whole mix will be stirred and battered until it becomes nice and foamy, perfect for cooling at temperature below freezing. It shall be magnificence incarnate and its name will be-"

Whatever it already was because Gorion cut her off. "Ice cream already exists, child."

"NNNOOOooohhhh!"

Suddenly monster.

Oh, wait, never mind. Elminster was not particularly enthused by the rampaging ogre charging out of the woods and interrupting his attempt to resume the conversation he was having with Khelben. Conversation that Imoen's scream of despair had thoroughly distracted him from just moments before, again. Scream that probably called the ogre to investigate the ruckus now that Cyrus thought about it.

The Sage of Shadowdale spared no time in muttering a word of power and gesturing impatiently at the large creature.

The ogre fell over dead, head crashing face-first into the grass just short of the roadside. Arawn, who'd been roaming and marking the opposite side of the road, faltered mid-stride at seeing the large creature dealt with before he had a chance to make more than one leap towards it. Disappointment shone clearly from him despite the lack of proper ability to physically pout.

Imoen's reaction was, naturally, the total opposite. "Yay! More loot!"

Watching her run to search the still warm body and "engage in the noble task of taking everything not nailed down because finders keepers," Cyrus mused that being happy and having no room for shadow in one's spirit did not necessarily mean an overabundance or even a minimum of shame. Then again, that had been a raving lunatic of an evil monster out to try to kill and eat them all, so he probably wouldn't have earned any of Cyrus' pity and respect even if he had any to spare, which he didn't because he barely felt much of anything, Bhaal compulsion aside. And searching every nook and cranny _had_ already netted Imoen some surprising treasures, most notably a diamond she found in a tree hollow and a Ring of Protection she got from the crack in a rock they passed an hour or so prior.

"Oooh!" Imoen gushed, unfastening what looked to be bracelets from the ogre's large wrists. "Big guy was wearing two girdles as wristbands!" She held the two items up for all of them to look. Arawn padded closer to sniff at the items and even the Archmages had set aside their conversation (which consisted of Elminster grilling Khelben for a complete backstory of… everything while the latter stubbornly refused to let the man sidetrack him even once). "What do you think? Would the one on the right look out of place on me?" Because they were obviously both magical so altering their looks wouldn't work too well.

"No, but I would advise you against securing it around your waist," Gorion told her, peering at the item with narrow eyes. The item that wasn't the Girdle of Piercing. "While I am aware you made sure to… experiment thoroughly with the spell to Alter Self, I imagine you would still prefer not to be locked in the opposite gender."

"Huh," Imoen wrinkled her nose, holding the Girdle or Femininity and Masculinity as far away as she could. She gave the ogre a suspicious look. "So… that was really a she-ogre?"

"At some point I would say yes," Khelben Arunsun said, giving the dead creature a look of distaste. "Little wonder it was unstable enough to roam looking for trouble." His gaze switched to Imoen then. "But you should not be too quick to avoid new experiences, particularly when you are not entirely unfamiliar with the concept." Looking at the way Khelben's soul colored as he spoke, Cyrus was certain he would feel impressed with his ability to keep a straight face if he could feel anything besides the urge to kill everyone and everything. "Particularly as there is one among our number with extensive experiences in such matters for you to draw upon." Elminster's self-light shuddered with realisation but the man didn't have time for more than the beginning of a warning glare before Khelben blithely (on the inside at least) gestured in his direction. "Why, the Sage himself spent years upon years living as a woman. I could not even begin to imagine the wisdom he would have to share about life as the fairer sex." He reached forward to pat Imoen on the shoulder and finished in a serious voice. "I imagine he would have even come up with ways to alleviate the monthly menses."

"Now let's not be hasty-"

But Imoen had already gasped, charged straight for him and was hugging his left arm to her chest before he even got those few words out. "Is it true?" She asked with stars in her eyes and hands clasped under her chin while nevertheless keeping the hold on the man's arm, somehow.

Elminster went for the sagely old man routine, which worked, barely. "Many and varied are the trials one must undergo before being counted among the Wise."

It only inflamed Imoen's fervour further. "But then I have so many _questions_!"

"All of which I am sure thine own experiences and studies have already answered." Elminster looked ahead and pointedly pulled a long whiff of smoke from his pipe to mark that conversation closed-

"Can you tell me a story about trollops and plugtails, _pleeeaaaase_!?"

The Sage of Shadowdale experienced a sudden coughing fit.

And was that…? Yes, it really was embarrassment overtaking his soul-self behind that rapidly readjusting façade of his. Oh, if only he could be bothered to feel anything, let alone curiosity, Cyrus would have _things_ to ask the man regarding that.

One outwardly composed but internally flustered Sage of Shadowdale later, they all resumed their walk and continued walking, talking and watching the scenery for another hour or so.

At which point the dwarf walking ahead of them all tripped on a loose stone he hadn't seen – _yes he had, he'd just… failed to notice it?_ – and barely regained his balance instead of falling on his face.

Gorion laid a firm hand on his shoulder and called a halt immediately. "I believe it is time to call it a rest for today." He looked up at the sun still a fair bit high up in the sky, as well as the large clouds approaching from the west. "Though I would normally have us walk until sunset, we should be far enough along that camping now would still allow us to reach the Friendly Arm Inn by afternoon tomorrow." He looked down to catch his son's gaze with a wry smile. "That is, provided that 'disaster of a conversation' can be considered to have been sufficiently walked off by now?"

Cyrus reached up to rub his eyes. "That's been the case since noon." Stopping, he returned his father's gaze as impassively as he usually did. "But your mood continued to recover in gusts and flares even afterwards so I decided to afford it as much time as I could." The words seemed to make Gorion glow inside more than the last few hours of travel combined. It left the dwarf feeling conflicted. He looked down at his hands which were completely colourless again, flesh and blood notwithstanding. "I think I… would benefit from early rest though."

Elminster hummed behind them, prompting them to turn. "I remember my first time adventuring," he gestured vaguely with the pipe stem. "Well, the parts that came after my early youth as a petty thief in any case." Ignoring the looks from Imoen at that, he gave Cyrus a peculiar look. "Those experiences in mind, I find it odd that fatigue would be catching up to thee already, young one. Mayhap thou shouldst at last share with us what thou meant when thou spoke of a compulsion, being that it seems to wear on thee in more ways than one."

"Or perhaps," Khelben Arunsun cut in, "the cause is a night spent standing on top of a waypoint monolith while weighed down by post-combat weariness and the burden of his father both." The Blackstaff frowned at the other man when Elminster gave him a surprised look. "Had you not kept interrupting me with questions, I may have even reached that point in my retelling."

Gorion sighed. "I doubt this is the time and place for this strange rivalry of yours to carry on."

"Quite right," Elminster nodded sagely. "Indeed, we shouldst instead focus on the reality that this shall be the very first time the young ones experience the true nature of adventuring!"

"Actually," Imoen cut in, always eager to correct. "I've already made this trip before so I-"

"Hmph!" Elminster sternly shot back. "Riding a wagon along protected trading routes in a guarded merchant caravan doth not make one an adventurer."

"What about the last two days then?" Imoen asked, confused.

"Until thou hath hiked more than twenty miles a day, slept in a ditch and eaten something that tried to kill you first, thou art not an adventurer. Anyone who is not an adventurer is a greengrocer."

Which was when Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun cast Mordekainen's Magnificent Mansion.

There was a prolonged silence.

Then another one that lasted until a cricket actually started creaking.

Throughout them both, Elminster Aumar stared at the disembodied door, appalled.

Then he switched to the other Archmage himself, expression not changing.

Which was when Khelben finally seemed to notice, though his inner light told a different story, naturally. "I'm sorry, did you say something?"

The resulting "how could you deprive them of the full breadth of adventuring experiences!?" 'debate' was truly a sight to behold. Or at least, that was what Cyrus assumed from watching the bemused fascination that overtook Imoen with the sort of intensity that totally coloured even her bright soul-star.

Minutes later, it was still going on.

"I cannot believe thou would actively work against their betterment thusly!"

"They underwent plenty of betterment already while having a proper roof over their heads."

"But they have left their home behind! Why doth one leave? So that one may return! So that one can see the place one came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there will see them differently, too. Coming back to where one started be not the same as never leaving. That thou would have them take the lap of luxury with them is the same as robbing them of these valuable insights!"

"The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience," Khelben said gravely from next to the disembodied doorway to his extradimensional residence. "Which is why I mean to provide them with the richest experience they are likely to get for a while."

"But what thou describe be no adventure at all!"

"And what would you say adventure is, then?"

"Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest Ladies. Snakes. Spiders... Pain. Death. Brave men. Cowardly men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles!"

"Forsooth. And I suppose the oncoming rainclouds are no issue at all in that context, being that you seem to be so eager to sleep in a ditch. Next you will tell me that being soaked alone is cold but being soaked with your best friend is an adventure?"

"As a matter of fact…"

Gorion gazed dully at the two bickering Archmages, then sighed wearily and sunk his face in his hands. "Useless." He dropped his hands and turned to give his son a most serious look. "Listen well, my son, and drink of my wisdom. Should you ever be in a bind with only these two great and honourable men to call upon, remember my words: either one will halve your woes, but both of them together will double them or worse."

"I would much rather have you with me instead, Father." The awestruck surprise that lit Gorion at that reply flash-blinded Bhaal's vestige so utterly that the dead god actually forgot for a few blissful moments to yell in Cyrus' ear that he should murder his own Father. "I honestly don't understand why you expected to somehow be overshadowed by the other two in my eyes," he told his silent parent, making his inner light and outer expression undergo changes even more dramatic than the first. The other three were listening in by then, but he returned their lack of consideration for their privacy with the same amount of lack of consideration for their rudeness. "Save for that lapse last night, you are the only person here with any amount of good sense right now, since Imoen seems to have used up her quota for the month."

"Speaking of sense!" Elminster capitalised on the opening, cutting Imoen's impending outburst off though it was still Khelben he addressed. "I cannot help but wonder if thou hast lost thine or if thou hast simply overlooked the fact that Gorion will be unable to benefit from this… _enriching_ experience thou hast decided to bestow on the young ones."

"What's this, now?" Imoen asked, looking between the old men.

Cyrus concurred. What did that even mean? He looked at his father expectantly.

Gorion gave him that same wry smile of earlier and his soul dimmed a bit due to whatever memory he was recalling. "You may have noticed and perhaps even wondered why we did not teleport to the Friendly Arm Inn? Or fly out of danger, for that matter." He indeed had wondered. "It has to do with an old enemy, I'm afraid. A rather pretentious red dragon by the name of Firkraag. Myself, your mother and some of our Harper friends crossed paths with him some years before your birth. You may not know this but I was actually a specialist Conjurer for the better part of my life." Conjuration. The spell school under which all teleportation magic fell, among many other things. "My spells caused the dragon no small amount of frustration and ultimately ensured his defeat. Unfortunately, he escaped us – dragons tend to do that in the open, being winged beasts that fly – but licking his wound did not suffice for him. Once he was well enough recovered, he channelled his spite into ruining me as best he could from afar. More specifically – though it took much scrying and rituals of disjunction to figure out and stop – he used Wish spells to cripple my magical ability. I suspect he used some dead language or other to word his wishes in very thorough and specific ways…" The man trailed off and shook his head. "Suffice to say, he barred me from three entire spell schools by the time we managed to use Wish magic to counter his and cause him to overextend to the point where he permanently lost the ability to cast Wish again. As it stands, I am unable to cast or even record in my spellbook anything from the Conjuration, Illusion and Transmutation schools. This not counting Necromancy, which I had set aside when I decided to specialise in the first place." Well then, there was now a red dragon at the top of Cyrus Anwar's hit list. A list which he hadn't even had until that moment but would serve him well in the future, he was sure. "Worse, while mostly this means I cannot write or memorise spells from the barred schools, for conjuration the wyrm spared no effort or disdain. Whenever I attempt to interact with such spells in any intentional or beneficial way, portals in particular, the magic tends to fail rather catastrophically, even when cast by someone else."

Huh. That explained why Cyrus was able to cast Silent Image to hide them while on the obelisk whereas they didn't teleport and apparently couldn't _be_ teleported by others either. And Khelben's extradimensional mansion was apparently...

"That sucks," Imoen said plainly, giving words to the thoughts of everyone.

"Indeed," Khelben stated. "He was rendered unable to use his own staff because of that, among other things." The Archmage looked at Cyrus. "It is the one Ulraunt now holds." Meaning a Staff of the Magi with an even greater range of abilities than usual.

"It served well as payment in exchange for allowing residence at Candlekeep for you," Father told him, earnest devotion shining through everything else, as always.

"Speaking of which, that has to do with the matter that delayed my arrival," Khelben told Gorion before catching Elminster's eye again, unwilling to let the man verbally goad him further. "But that can wait until our friend's concerns are assuaged. Because I did not, in fact, forget about this particular issue." That being said, the man stepped closer to the disembodied door, turned the handle and then turned it again.

The entire space on the side of the wilderness road shimmered, twisted, stretched outwards and inward at once, then blew the air in all directions as a gigantic block of black marble, 500-feet wide on the side, materialized in its place.

Elminster blinked and forgot to puff smoke out through his pipe.

Gorion stared.

Imoen boggled.

Cyrus didn't blame them. Had he the same range of emotion, he very well may have done the same. The home may not have looked like anything resembling a dwelling from the outside, but the spell was always about the interior anyway.

"You removed the extraplanar nature of the dwelling?" Gorion asked, astonished.

"Not quite. I added an extra function to allow it to manifest physically into the world," the Archmage explained, patting the doorframe. "It took an extra spell level to make it happen, and the duration is still only 24 hours, but this way you should have no trouble coming inside or otherwise taking advantage of it at all."

There was immense meaning in that throwaway comment. There was literally _no_ reason to invest the resources, time and effort into modifying that spell in that particular manner save for wanting to make it usable for someone with Gorion's unique predicament. Had the man expected, hoped or anticipated traveling alongside him since… at least several years before? Or perhaps it was just his regret showing, compelling the wizard to do something for Gorion for once, rather than the other way around or for both of them to just focus almost exclusively on Cyrus while at Candlekeep.

"Ahem…" Khelben cleared his throat in the awkward silence and opened the door. "Let's go in and perhaps go ahead with the Little Prince's plan to, what was it? 'Talk it out like adults and hug it out like the good friends and family we are' I believe was the exact wording."

"-. .-"

It started off well.

They entered, they settled, they were seen to by the ghost-like servants. Treated like kings – _and queen!_ – while they talked, ate or studied the spellbook of Rhialto the Fabulous, or Marvellous or whatever he would never be calling himself again on account of being dead, though insanity did not necessarily heal upon passing so perhaps the man would be as incorrigible in the afterlife as well?

_You cannot deny me. You may as well ask to live without blood or deny you breathe air!_

It quickly became clear, though, that only Khelben and Elminster were still able to stay up and spend time on productive pursuits. So long as they didn't interact at least, though Cyrus assumed it was at least partly an act or consequence of being forced into a situation where interaction and leisure had to be considered Things of Importance.

_I am of you and within you; I am what you should have been!_

Cyrus, Imoen and Gorion felt the sleepless night catching up to them, and while they would normally have managed more than one in a row, the situation was far from usual and Gorion was far from young and spry. And he did not have Mystra's Grace or the lingering effect of an ancient Mythal to render him ageless like the other two.

_You were not born to live; you are fuel for the return! I shall act as you were born to! You will surrender to the instinct! To the blood!_

So Cyrus took only the time he needed to explain the little he knew or understood off the sudden compulsions and its causes before turning in. The mansion's quarters actually beat everything Candlekeep had offered, save perhaps the quarters of the Keeper of Tomes and First Reader.

_What do I want?! Your life, your soul, your body!_

Not that the extra comfort made a difference. Cyrus was more than ready to sleep for a while.

_I am the instinct! I am the blood!_

It figured that things would only get worse from there, though he could be excused for not thinking it would happen so soon or while he was asleep.

After all, he'd never had a dream before.

_Fall to your knees—you can do no other! I am within you. I am your essence._

That night he had the first.

The first dream.

A dream he nearly did not return from at all, and which promised that he would not return from the next.


	10. Rule of Three

His first sensation was of floating in frigid, dreadful blackness.

_Ah._

His second sensation was of drowning.

_Entertainment returns._

Memories bombarded him of the first time this happened, when his throat closed up while spasmodic breaths dragged blood into the mouth and windpipe, triggering an immediate contraction of the muscles around the larynx in an attempt to keep his lungs stoppered. The agony, the confusion, the total terror. The resulting spasms suffocated him, sending him to flailing death throes that drowned him without actually drowning.

_Yes. You were a defiant, pugnacious little thing as a babe, unlike now._

Every night after the first, his lungs were already completely flooded when he awoke to that abyss of nightmares. The shock inevitably sent him struggling and flailing helplessly in the depths of that blood ocean, scared out of his mind and not understanding anything. At least for the first few hundred of the 6,937 times that his soul awoke in that abyss and drowned to death without passing on.

_Even those hopeless throes of agony that came after were a sight more attention-worthy than what you can muster now._

Now he drowned again as he always did once he fell asleep, but it had been long since he managed more than the barest of flinches before his whole frame shuddered and slackened, drifting aimlessly through the lightless abyss where his soul was still somehow perfectly visible, the little of it he still had left intact. He never saw much of himself, given his inability to move or even tense any part of his soul-self. He beheld his right hand now only because his head was turned to that side, just a tad. It was pale but marred by criss-crossing, bulging veins shining a greenish, sickly unlight.

_You finally committed your first kill against a thinking being, bothersome little vessel._

Semaj. Dead simply because a young man had needed to make room in his pocket for something else while saving his Father from the death he'd been trying to deal in turn. The wizard's face and whole frame flashed before Cyrus' eyes, for a moment.

_I've been waiting years for this._

More years than he'd have liked.

_All this time you've defied me. I am in you yet you've denied me._

Terrible visage amidst the darkness of the death-like ocean that had slain his mind and will nearly beyond recovery after the temple, when _death_ gained a foothold in him the moment he looked upon and understood everything about the woman who fancied herself good at killing children but really wasn't. Understood and contemplated how he would perform the same tasks in turn.

_For months upon months you disbelieved me, hid behind flimsy walls of self-delusion and false hope._

Months upon months of keeping his eyes shut against the bloody depths that had drowned him and filled his lungs, telling himself over and over that this wasn't real and he only had to shut everything away until he was back in the other place, the place with air, light and Father.

_For years you've denied me, fought me within your own mind._

If using every speck of will to cover his eyes and shut out the terror could even be called that.

_But even that obsessive fool that fancies himself your parent could not keep you from your nature forever._

A playful cat clawed and bit at him only to be torn apart limb from limb at his hands. Not enough of an unwitting and unintended homage to the dead God of Murder to have any lasting repercussions if the essence alone was what the young dwarf had to contend with. But the active will of a god was not as easily defied, even a Vestige drifting as a corpse in the Astral Sea. The averted sacrifice when he was an infant had failed in more or less every way, but by Fate or Fortune his moment of near-total resonance with the Concept of Murder sent a ripple through the Astral Plane. One that the remnant of a dead god had seen – focused as he was on the place of his power where the ritual was occurring – and decided to turn into an _opportunity_.

Opportunity he could capitalise on when he killed his first living thing.

_It was the first moment when you did as you were meant to. First time that you honoured me, as well you should._

The ocean of murder had cut into him like razors, somehow, skewered him and dug and _ripped_ until it tore out a piece of him, leaving a dagger-shaped hole at the core of his soul. Somehow, even after that he still managed to persuade himself back into total disbelief of the horrifying dream states he inevitably found himself in every night. Bhaal did not find that any more pleasing than being kept at bay by the unformed will of a babe, but BELIEF was a true force in the Planes. On and on things went from there, even as Cyrus himself never remembered the night terrors upon awakening, until the day when he turned five.

_You became mine, then, though to this day you refuse to admit it._

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it was suspicious how easily the essence within allowed him to see into the past and witness that conversation. For all that he didn't feel anything about the balcony scene while awake, asleep was an entirely different thing. He wasn't emotionless here, though he often wished otherwise.

_How ironic, that your sharp mind would break your shield of self-delusion through simple insight into your situation, even if you refused to acknowledge it with your waking mind for years after._

His waking half-self would likely appreciate the ingenuity of Bhaal melding his splinter of a soul with his own essence, such as it was. Of the nature of that Dagger of Bone that enabled the usurper to sever the silver cord connecting his soul to his body _._

_That self-deluded fool who fancies himself your parent will suffer first and longest for his unwitting interference._

If Gorion hadn't held him through the night back then, if he had been less than totally devoted and determined to live by his words, if he hadn't said _I won't let him have you_ , Cyrus would have been cast out to drift helplessly in the Astral Sea and Bhaal would have taken his body then and there.

_What would he say, I wonder, if he knew you were using him as a soul anchor?_

He would praise him, no doubt. He was selfless like that. To know that his love and devotion had reached him all the way into those depths. Allowed the young boy to instinctively anchor himself into the world, to find his way back to his body and reconnect his Astral Cord. It had been a reflex, but for all that Bhaal claimed he entirely owned him, Cyrus thought and willed at the same level as he did, there in the middle of essence divine, however twisted. And what he willed for was to stay unseparated from Father, so as long as Father refused to let Bhaal have him Cyrus' soul wouldn't be going anywhere.

_He will have far different thoughts once he realizes what you truly are!_

His dead soul-self jerked in remembered pain. The memory of the knife sinking into his chest. It hadn't managed to kill him any more than drowning in an ocean of blood did, but it wasn't supposed to. The real goal was to corrupt, to slowly overtake him from inside. Replace him from within bit by bit, flicker by flicker, Bhaaltaint pushing in and building up while his emotions and _memories_ of emotions bled out of him along with bits of soul, literally. They drifted like drops of quicksilver through the vastness of those bloody depths even now, joined by new ones as all he felt since waking up to that ever-returning nightmare seeped out through the stab wound the Dagger of Bone stuck out of. Drops of soul floated away as his being was steadily replaced over the years by red/dark/green otherness that shone with sickly greenish bleak/dark/nothing _unlight_ through veins that weren't veins.

_Would he still be so eager to die for you, I wonder, if he knew half of you was you no longer?_

Would Gorion still be eager to die for him if he knew his continued breathing was the only reason Cyrus hadn't been separated from his body already?

_Such a shame that he will never know, since you never truly do either._

Mockery. Not surprising from so evil, debased a dead god. He was right, though. Deadening his emotions came first and was easy to pass off as normal, since Cyrus had only just begun to gain ground in that area when the dagger was made back when he turned five. To _feel_ strongly enough for him and others to notice in the waking world. It never occurred to even him to wonder if it was stranger than normal to actually feel things only for the emotions to disappear as soon as he thought about them. Moving on to his mind was the natural next step afterwards, and though his perfect memory meant Bhaal could not take too much without causing suspicion, it also meant that there was never a reason Cyrus or others would assume he had forgotten anything of what _had_ been taken or replaced. Bhaal couldn't do too much from across the planes and Cyrus pitted his own will against the depravations as well as he could, when he was aware enough to do it – this was _his_ soul and _his_ body – but steadily the Vestige managed to affect him even in the waking world, making him forget things big and small.

Like the fact that Khelben Arunsun had cast Mind Blank on him minutes after he first mentioned the compulsion earlier in the day. Or the fact that he'd forgotten about that spell entirely some time later, the same moment that _**death**_ ripped apart the protection without his say-so, sending him stumbling only for Gorion to call a halt, 'provided that 'disaster of a conversation' can be considered to have been sufficiently walked off by now?'

Like the fact that he'd worn an Amulet of Protection from Evil since he was five.

Like the fact that Cyrus' will was just half of what commanded wards, spells and other magics _**still**_. Every time he called on his inner power to do anything without completely understanding it or setting precise parameters, he was effectively inviting Bhaal to use his will as he deemed best. And what he deemed best was to nullify the effect of said amulet the first chance he got, then go from there.

Not that the pendant would have worked much against something inherent to his nature, but since it wasn't just the essence involved there the Vestige had to be more proactive. And the dead god did enjoy the irony, even if not quite on the same level as Myrkul did.

_You should have accepted your fate as an infant. Then, at least, you would have merely been replaced, rather than assimilated._

The voice had grown steadily closer since his awakening in that dream. It came from all around him now.

_But I shall be the one to benefit in the end. You certainly proved quite creative with your use of my power, and the connections you've formed during your life will make my ascension infinitely easier._

Blood pulled on itself and solidified in the form of a corpse-like male humanoid. The hideous apparition settled to drift above Cyrus' still form, secure in the knowledge that the dwarf was completely paralysed, if it even felt there was anything to be threatened by at all. Skeletal fingers grabbed the young soul by the chin and forced him to meet lidless eyes. **"First came the Decision. Then came the process. And now, finally, the results."**

Decision-Process-Results.

So he wanted to use the Rule of Three to empower this, was he?

Bad move.

A will secretly marshalled over many years seized the essence all around them, forced the blood grip-tight around the dagger handle and violently _yanked_.

The Dagger of Bone wrenched out of where it was embedded in his heart – the Bhaalblood burst out to follow, easing the pressure that had built up inside in all that time – and flew to his hand before Bhaal's projection could get over his shock.

Decision-Process-Results, was it?

Decision-Process- _Consequences_ , maybe.

**Decision** : An ideal. A star known as Hope. A father's wholesome reason. _I want to live._

The ocean of death and blood expansive enough to span the world shuddered utterly as a moribund soul ignited with the light of life. Fire bright and hot enough to send the manifestation of dead madness scuttling away, alight.

" _You are a remarkable lad, Little Prince. You've given me much and showed me even more, all the while labouring under limits I would not wish on anyone."_ Khelben had told him that the first time he visited Candlekeep after that 12th birthday. One more thing to add to the long list of memories that Bhaal had taken from his waking mind. _"I place my faith in you. I only ask that you do all you can to find a way to live. Live and be happy."_

**Process** : Change. Emerge in light and flame from the depths of clotted bloodshed, just like his teacher's grey/dark/clotted self once erupted like a star, never to again go out. Use the ocean of divinity around to _command_ reality. Call the Tides that Moved the Planes to help him over his bastard of a godly father because this was _his_ soul and _his_ body. Call on JUSTICE. Call on CHARITY. Provide BELIEF to complete the triad and speak aloud as the light of memory enveloped him and _consumed_ the blood around him in fire. "Screw you! This soul's my own and I'm keeping it!"

The Slayer recoiled with an enraged howl as it _burned_.

The multitude of memories lost in the waking world, the drops and shards of soul bloomed in the dwarf's mind and around him alike, quicksilver drops lighting up like a field of stars throughout that blood abyss. "This life is _mine_." The Plane Tides enveloped the ocean of death at his words, then flowed over and through it, reaching the both of them, evaluating, then wrapping around Cyrus Anwar like diaphanous halos that whispered miracles, showed him possibilities and spoke of fate fairly inflicted on the greatest of the multiverse's sinners. It almost overwhelmed him with visions of great dominions, acts of hopeful change and images of an undying hell-bound man so scarred that his skin was grey and hard as stone.

Then feeling returned to him and allowed him to move his body under his own will for the first time since his never ending nightmare started, that same will that allowed him to claim this moment.

That exact will which allowed him to lift the Dagger of Bone and drive it right into the Slayer's ugly skull.

The dead god's projection dispersed with a scream of rage.

**Consequences** : Victory. Freedom. Peace.

For a moment.

But _only_ a moment.

Divinity had been created _precisely_ to direct and override the cumulative thought waves and tendencies of mortals, to control the Tides of all levels of Realmspace and the Planes, whether they liked it or not. Already the blood abyss was settling, forcefully brought to heel by the will of an angry god, even dead as he was. The Tides were banished, not easily but banished nevertheless for the simple reason that Bhaal had never renounced claim on his essence, even as he passed it to others for his own ends.

That was fine. He only needed a moment.

He was aware of everything within the ocean's bounds at all times as well. He had claim of his own and his will held sway here, however much Bhaal hated it. Cyrus Anwar gathered every scrap of new knowledge and ideas that could be of use, added them to the steadily growing pile of stolen memories and understanding he'd recreated in the depths of his soul that Bhaal didn't know of, arranged it mentally in the form easiest to enable the informed decisions he'd been denied all this time, then ripped the connection to his waking mind from Bhaal completely and used it to send _everything_ on just as the Dagger of Bone came hurtling through the semi-darkness and stabbed him in the heart again.

In the depths of the abyss, a newborn light winked out along with all the other drifting stars. But his veins no longer glowed with sickly unlight, his link to his mind was his again – would _stay_ his for a time – and his soul was no longer hollow.

He smiled grimly even as the fury of a mad, dead abomination descended on his nightmare once again.

He'd done it.

He'd figured it out.

He'd even jolted himself awake before it was too late.

Next time his waking half-self fell into slumber he may never wake up even if his body did, but at least now his fate was no longer hopeless.


	11. The Benefits of Cosmic Power

Cyrus Anwar came to his senses in the midst of a world gone mad.

It was a world of steaming water, blazing wood, shifting solids and shuddering winds. A world of wildfire and rent nature, light flaring every which way in colours more agonising than dazzling. Sound wasn’t much better, lacking only the screams of the damned. It was like the world and the world’s individual pieces were breaking, building, cracking and shattering all at once, arcs of lightning flashing to and fro everywhere as the night wore on. And the _fire_ …

His scalp stung, his beard smoked and his skin burned and felt in places as if it had melted. Was melting. It was pain almost severe enough to make him see white and hear nothing but a faint ringing, but the cacophony all around would not be ignored, and the drumbeats…

Drumbeats.

No.

Not drums. The rap of fingers on a lute belly. A lute whose strings were being plucked.

The soft voice of Hope, [singing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh6GOmrYqA0).

I walk alone, the night wears a shadow  
Painted in silver, painted in gold  
The moment ends in silence, then the moment grows old

Dwarven ears focused entirely on the sound of music, as he’d done countless times before without fail when he recognised just _who_ was playing her instruments and enchanting voice.

And when he smiles, a thousand dreams surround him  
Dress them in secrets no one can hold  
The fire dies in the distance, as the embers grow cold

Beautiful lies streamed from her tongue. His secrets weren’t his, he almost never smiled, his dreams were not dreams at all and the fire most definitely was not distant or cold.

Sing for me now...  
All the world is a stage  
Smile take a bow,  
From your gilded cage...

Still more lies, though perhaps the world was a stage in a manner of speaking. A stage for sins made unwitting. Killing and murder inflicted on kobolds, wild animals and a loyal wolf companion whose body lay lifeless and broken against the trunk of the oak a dozen feet away. He didn’t need to wonder how that fate had befallen him. What fate he had inflicted upon him after the hound caught up to him at the end of his single-minded sprint through the forest. He did not have the luxury of forgetfulness this time.

Behind the veil, he's safe where no one can reach him  
Roses with thorns  
Just make him bleed  
A fragile porcelain angel  
Break so easily

He wondered if he should laugh at the absurdity that were those mournful verses. Laugh or perhaps cry. He did neither, since he could feel nothing at all to any meaningful extent, even as the rhythm of the wordless interlude picked up the pace, a little bit. Nothing except faint surprise at who and what spoke next.

**I Wish that All of Mystra’s Weave within a Hundred Meters of My Position Be Restored Right This Instant to How It Was One Hour Ago.**

Rent Weave healed, spellfire disappeared and magic calmed and faded under the calm proclamation of a mighty voice. Elminster Aumar. Focused. Contemplative. Roused to action, driven by a soul shining with a mournfully volatile merger of command/comprehension/pity.

That was okay. Pity wasn't a shame. It was a sign of a decent nature and a sign that there was something wrong in the world that didn't in any way, shape or form reflect badly upon the receiver.

Strings that plucked themselves were joined by a fiddle as Hope let her lute drift off and sing on its own to use her bow instead. The tune melded oddly but seamlessly with the crackle of the flames that still lingered here and there, fire that had long since stopped being a merely magical thing.

Sing for me now...  
All the world is a stage  
Smile take a bow,  
From your gilded cage...

“Son.” Gorion. Outwardly deliberate, calm and determined. Internally terrified for him beyond anything he’d ever before been. Stubbornly hopeful regardless because of that elusive but brilliant thing called _faith_. “I am going to cast Mind Blank on you. Focus on me as I do and do _not_ waver in your attention on the fact it is there after I am done. From here on out, at all times, you must **_know_** that the protection exists and **_know_** that **_death will not force it still_**.”

Cyrus nodded with some difficulty, almost collapsing where he was nearly sprawled face-down on the ground due to the dizzy spell that brought on him. The scorched earth barely stayed away from his face under the strain of his arms, and his knees felt like the only parts of his body not burned, despite the Staff of Healing having already been used on him twice. The protection spell enveloped him then, though even with it on he felt no different at all.

No, that wasn’t quite true. His heart flared with a pang of agony that disappeared nearly as quickly as it came, taking the momentary vision of a dark abyss of blood along with it.

But not the memory of it, or of the sensation.

Hope, as she often did without knowing the effect she had on him, effortlessly pulled him out of the vision that would have made him fail his father’s order.

The restless heart  
Cries when no one is listening  
He’s waiting for someone  
Waiting for you  
To want, love and need him  
To help him to make it through...  
As the moment grows old  
In his Gilded Cage...

Imoen trailed off slowly, followed languidly by her instruments and Cyrus nearly broke concentration on the Mind Blank then and there. Even feeling nearly nothing as he always did, he had to put effort into dealing with the reality of how easy and beautifully his little sister could sing songs made entirely of what could only be called _blatant lies_ even as they evoked the gravity of his situation with perfect accuracy. That song, that last stanza in particular, portrayed the effective _opposite_ of his situation. Gorion - and from some point onwards Imoen and Khelben Arunsun – had _always_ been there to listen, want, love and need him. Just like they were now.

Just like Khelben Arunsun chose that moment to step into the light cast by the fire, walked over to the dead form of Arawn, crouched to lay a hand on the animal and spoke the second Wish of the night.

**I Wish for this Wolf be Resurrected with Full Health and Vigour Right this Instant.**

“-.  .-“

“Well, ‘twould seem there be a fair bit of rhyme and reason in these notes ye wrote, lad,” Elminster said from where he sat at the table in the main conference room of Khelben’s Magnificent Mansion. The man was entirely unperturbed now that things had calmed down. Not that he’d been overly flat-footed before. He hadn’t even suffered the backlash of the Wish, unlike Khelben had been misfortunate enough to in the past.

Case in point, the Sage of Shadowdale gave absolutely no indication of feeling awkward or in any other way uncomfortable despite sitting with his back to a gigantic gouge in the wall. And floor. And part of the ceiling. Gouge that went through the room behind as well as the room behind that and the room behind _that_ and all the rooms beyond _those_ , plus the exterior wall, the ground and through both upper floors of the conjured mansion. And the rooms behind those and the rooms behind _those_.

Cyrus had gone a step beyond the stillness of death when he turned upon the weave matrix and-

“Aye aye,” Elminster said, forcefully drawing Cyrus’ attention from the massive damage he had inflicted on his teacher’s conjured abode. “We art all well aware of the bisected nature of the half of this mansion located behind me. We art also fully cognizant of the disaster thou would have wrought had ye still been here when yon wild sphere erupted from thee. As opposed to ye merely forcing thine _death_ essence out early and clearing thine’s self an exit in anticipation of embarking on thine night-time excursion.”

Mordekainen’s Magnificent Mansion. A massive, temporary conjuration literally made of Weave strands for him to rip into. If he’d torn at it like he’d done back at Candlekeep, all those years ago…

If they’d been inside an _extradimensional_ version of that spell…

He gripped his wolf’s head tighter at the thought. That was another thing. The absurd animal had bounded over to him as soon as he’d been revived – instead of, oh running the sod away from the maniac who’d hurled him into the tree to begin with – and refused to be more than two feet away since. Even when he changed clothes to a new set Father conjured for him. Case in point, Arawn had lain his head in his lap as soon as Gorion sat Cyrus down at the conference table and-

“Forsooth! We art also surely shocked at the lack of sense exhibited by thine animal friend as well,” Elminster said mildly, snapping him out of his mental tangent – _he’d forgotten about Mind Blank again, check for… yes, still there, small mercies_ – and waved a few papers in his direction. “Now that that is well enough established, mayhap we might focus on the issue at hand? Specifically these notes thou spelled up in the few minutes between the charming racked of thine sudden awakening and the even more charming racket that defined thine flight from this place.”

Gorion squeezed his son’s hand. Save for when Cyrus changed into intact clothing, he’d not let go of him since they finally tracked him down in the forest, not too hard a task given that they needed only walk towards the newest forest fire in progress. Khelben also gave him an encouraging nod from across the round table they’d chosen for that middle-of-the-night research session. Imoen, oddly enough, had chosen to sit between the two Archmages rather than on Gorion’s other side – Elminster was already on the dwarf’s left – which put her right face-to-face with him. She occasionally munched on the snacks provided by the ghost-like servants, but that was all.

Elminster pushed over a dozen pages filled with annotated diagrams Cyrus could vaguely deduce the meaning of due to having been the one to conjure them two hours earlier. Along with the 124 sheets that Khelben was going through (the third time) and the other 124 sheets of paper stacked at Elminster’s elbow. 123 now that Imoen had taken the one on top to look over. It was probably curiosity but Imoen was even harder to read than normal. She seemed to have become a lot more serious and quiet during the short time since his… excursion.

“I can only vaguely make heads or tails of these, and even then only half-way,” the dwarf said, rubbing his now hairless head. He probably looked a sight, bald and with just the minimum of moustache and beard. Not enough to even denote him as a member of the dwarven people as opposed to a malformed specimen of the human race. Distressing is what it was. “As far as I can see, these are research diagrams and guidance notes for a ritual. Specifically, a ritual designed especially for my unique… problem.”

“It seems so,” Elminster was treating him to an oddly intense gaze. Fortunately, his inner light was much more expressive: certainty/comprehension/already-assured.

Cyrus wasn’t exactly feeling very reassured himself, though. He looked to the stack of auxiliary papers. “May I?”

“Certainly, lad,” Elminster said, pushing the bundle over while Khelben did the same.

Cyrus had effectively created those papers as soon as he’d catapulted from his bed with the memory of that never ending nightmare and a self-imposed compulsion to wake everyone up, grab the massive pile of information that had appeared in the forefront of his mind and _put it all on paper right now_.

He’d been appropriately loud despite that only Imoen and Gorion were asleep – the other two had stayed up to study Rhialto’s spellbook – and was pretty quick with the magic too, creating all the papers in around 10 minutes. But by the end of it he’d felt the malignant presence at the _back_ of his mind trying and succeeding in momentarily overpowering his own will, so Cyrus had dumped the papers, whirled around and _cut_ at the magic barring his way and run off before his abusive biological seed donor forced a large enough connection to the waking world to rip at the mansion’s structure. Good thing too, since it would have resulted in a wild magic cascade that would have put all but the worst ones of the Godswar to shame.

Banishing the memory and checking the Mind Blank again – _still there, Bhaal being held at bay for now, prior lapse was a freak occurrence that could not be helped if the memory reclamation and information transfer was to work_ – Cyrus spent the same amount of time it took him to create the papers on scanning the notes and refreshing his memory.

In the end, his conclusion was the same. “I can get the broad strokes but the execution… the preparation, they’re beyond my understanding.” He frowned. “But I _know_ I understood them while I was writing them down.”

“I suppose that confirms these annotations here, then,” Elminster dug out a specific sheet and tapped the relevant lines with his finder while speaking the words aloud. “Bhaaltaint ownership: dual. Claim: equal opposites. Claim contested via Vestigial Divine Authority. Ownership still inviolate: my soul, my body with all that implies. Overall Effect: Level of Awareness on par with intruding Bhaal Vestige while mind and soul a single whole. Conversely: ability to use essence and otherwise act by own will very limited.”

“Which is where one of the more interesting recurring terms in your transcriptions come ups,” Khelben picked up from there. “You seem to have deliberately focused on the ritual data and diagrams rather than auxiliary information. But you also used certain terms deliberately meant to allow us to make inferences. Here, ’intruding’ implies not only that you have claim at least on par with his, but also that Bhaal’s consciousness _literally_ should not be there and likely was _not_ there to plague you in the beginning. More importantly, it could mean that the Vestige is _literally_ an intruder. As in, he may have channelled most of what was left in his dead husk into you, if not forced himself inside you entirely in anticipation of taking you over earlier.”

Imoen choked on a pastry at the double entendre but the men were able to keep a straight face, even if their inner lights were a different matter.

Khelben tapped his elbow with his fingers. He was leaning forward on his crossed arms. “If that is true, it may be that the reason he is as cognizant as he is _because_ he rebuilt some form of self-awareness from _your_ essence. Provided himself the ability to actually _act_ from beyond the grave despite the powerlessness that should have defined him after he was slain in the Godswar. Though why he would be so impatient as to seem outright desperate I cannot say.”

“There was some concern over the rites for his resurrection not having started yet, I think,” Cyrus frowned in thought. “I don’t think Bhaal realised exactly how much he let slip whenever he taunted me. Though he wasn’t always coherent so he occasionally forgot what year it was, especially once I managed to reliably conceal my more relevant thoughts from him.” His heart twinged with the ghost ache of the nightmare.

“Yes, there seemed to be some mentions of that as well,” Elminster said, combing through the stack of notes.

The two Archmages and Gorion proceeded to review the various papers one more time, taking copious notes of their own. It went in that vein for some time, during which Cyrus returned to focusing on the Mind Blank not going still or dying entirely while stroking his wolf’s fur.

Eventually, when it was about 4 in the morning, Elminster broke the quiet that had subdued even Imoen. “Right then.” He exchanged meaningful looks with the other old men before meeting Cyrus’ eyes. “I do believe we have our way forward.”

“So the ritual is workable then?” Cyrus asked, feeling relief for the second time in his life. Arawn gave a soft whine at that. “You understand it?”

“Aye,” his mouth twitched into grin momentarily. “’Tis truly an onerous duty to be as brilliant as I am, but I bear it as best I am able.”

“Note the humility, young one.” Khelben threw in. “Why, he even acknowledges that he is not the _only_ intelligent person in the world, occasionally,” the man further said drily, not looking up from his latest handwritten notes.

“And I am not the only one to understands the information packet thou provided,” Elminster added with a huff.

“ _Very_ occasionally, Little Prince.”

Cyrus had expected the Sage to harrumph or otherwise comment but instead the man looked at the other Chosen of Mystra pensively. “I was not certain before but thou truly care about him, don’t ye?”

Khelben stopped writing, carefully put his latest note and dwarven-made pen aside in favour of meeting Elminster’s stare with a challenging one of his own. 

“Astounding,” the Sage said, uncaring of how insultingly that could be taken. Clearly, the Chosen of Mystra had learned to make certain allowances over the centuries. “Nine hundred years thou spent keeping thineself _to_ thineself, looking for problems even when there were none to be had, all the while never truly confiding in anyone until Laeral Silverhand. And even then thou never changed or trusted in anyone but the Goddess, insofar as ye could trust at all. Let alone trust that others could be trusted with any meaningful information, or even-”

Khelben glared and cut him off. “Perhaps I had good reason not to trust others with information, seeing as even those with the ‘onerous duty of being as brilliant as you are’ can carelessly throw private details around, as you have just proven.”

Elminster shook his head slightly and rested it in his palm, dismissing that rebuke entirely. “And now here thou art, putting aside literal matters of state and international affairs for the sake of a friend and his son whom thou once wanted to kill in his infancy.” Khelben showed nothing openly, but a ghost of that gnarly, sickly green shame of long ago flared all over his inner self for a dreadful instant. “And thou are not even doing it only for Gorion’s sake, are you? Not truly.”

“He isn’t?” Cyrus asked despite himself.

Khelben’s head snapped in his direction with an incensed and unmistakable glare he only ever managed to muster for the greatest of the world’s idiots.

“Oh, that’s right,” Cyrus murmured in recollection. “We had that talk after your fist visit following my 12th birthday. I actually remember it now.”

Gorion’s soul dimmed beside him and Khelben’s own self-star went grim and almost _still_ for a terrible instant before it returned to the ever-burning, unbowed silvery flare coloured pink/not-pink/royal-purple/violet and every nameless colour Cyrus had ever found pleasing to look upon.

How he wished Father’s soul could glow like that again. Brighter and more colourful even, like it used to.

The Archmage of Waterdeep let his glare fade. “You had forgotten…” He said sadly, face softening even further. “He actually made you forget that. Such a thing…”

Cyrus ignored the curiosity, internal and external alike, that coloured Elminster Aumar. “He did well in taking away some of my foundational recollections.” Cyrus tried to smile, but he doubted it looked right. He’d never managed to properly emulate the expression and the real ones were few and far between. “Anything to prevent me from making properly informed decisions.”

Everyone fell silent at that, for a time.

Eventually, Gorion broke it. “Son.” He waited for the dwarf to look up at him. “How do you feel right now?”

It was a good question, but for once he did not have to think about it too much. “Weary.”

Father’s self-light flickered with the ghost of anger – one of many emotions he could no longer muster properly – but instead of dimming, it paradoxically flared brighter with that scarlet determination of his.

Cyrus’ heart sank. “You’re doing it again, aren’t you?” he murmured, though no one was far enough to miss it. Martyrs. Hopeless the lot of them. “You’ve decided-“

“On a perfectly appropriate course of action,” Father cut him off implacably. “One that we will not waste time debating over, son. Not this time.” But his episode of manifest will did not last long. His face softened soon enough. “There is nothing that can change my thoughts on this. Not when I’m looking at you knowing that you’ve never had an actual night’s rest since the temple.”

“And that is likely the most important matter here,” Elminster cut in, preventing what would have been a tense silence. “It appears we have a very limited time to prepare. This ritual is based around the Rule of Three. Very well detailed too, that part. The plan enwheels fully-detailed and sketched arcane circles and rune chains depicting the concepts available to draw on.” He begun to sketch words in fire mid-air, using his fingertip. “Attack–defence–climax, conquest–counterattack–victory, tyranny–rebellion–freedom. These three sets of three in turn are each a part of the decision–process–consequence thematic. However, the preparatory part, which ideally should be the one most lengthy and meticulous, instead needs to be fully done over the next three days if this ritual is going to work.” Elminster set the paper he was examining on the table. “That is all the time your soul expects to be able to endure unbroken and unbent now that you have finally inflicted death on an ensouled sapient. We literally do not _have_ the time to bicker or otherwise waste time on chatting since you apparently have your days numbered”

Cyrus struggled to say something, though he didn’t understand why he felt the need. “Or maybe the time since my birthday to now counts as the period of preparation? That’s when I actually begun putting all this together I think.”

“Fifteen years since the balcony,” Gorion muttered. “Fifteen divided by three.”

“I suppose it won’t hurt to keep it in mind,” Khelben pondered, exchanging a look with Elminster.

“Which we three will discuss tomorrow, at length,” Elminster rose from his seat, prompting Khelben and Gorion to do the same. “Now, much as I wouldst like to say we shall all keep your son company, Gorion, I am afraid Khelben and I have some very specific spells to prepare. We will need our magic in the days to come.” The Archmage walked around the table to look down at Cyrus, who’d just gotten out of his seat himself. “Thou will have to eschew rest entirely, I fear. But of course, thou already know this. I suggest thou use it to think about any contingencies, no matter how ludicrous they may seem. The little lady there said something earlier about turning you into an Elf so you need no longer sleep.” What? Stop being a dwarf? Preposterous. “It sounds ridiculous but it must be said that it is not without its logic. ‘Twould work as a stopgap measure, if nothing else.”

Khelben stepped forward next to the old man just as Imoen did the same for him, standing on the other side of Gorion. “I will teleport to my home first, I think,” the Archmage of Waterdeep said. “You will need certain potions and possibly a magical item, or two?” He waited to see if Imoen would nod, which she did, before continuing. “Two, then, to make the next few days easier on you both. Though I fully expect you to grab a nap when you can, young lady, even if it has to be during the day when Gorion is available to watch over the Little Prince in your stead.”

“Pfff,” Imoen waved him off. “You clearly haven’t heard about our chained all-nighters then.”

“So it would seem,” the man answered drolly. “Nevertheless, better to be on the safe side regardless I would think.” He looked at Gorion. “I am strongly inclined towards spiriting the lad away to my tower and doing all we can there, but you would not be able to make the trip. And since all signs suggest that separating you from him would be the worst folly…”

Cyrus was going to _murder_ Firkraag if and when he no longer had to worry about losing his body and soul because of it.

Khelben actually moved fairly quickly, all things considered. He was gone seven or so minutes later and returned only an hour after, bringing not only a potion case but also a minor bag of holding (full of gold and only gold) and a gem bag (full of gems, naturally). The latter two were ‘just in case they decide to cast some spell or other with more pretentious material components’ or so he told Gorion.

The wait that loomed before Cyrus would have been nostalgic in any other situation – deathless night with a clear sky, Imoen nearby to talk or just watch with him – but it was marred by the strangely subdued manner of a sister that decided against playing or singing anything, and the knowledge that his days were literally numbered.

“Lad,” Elminster said, much to Cyrus’ surprise. He’d have expected him to have turned in by then, but there the old sage was, coming to stand next to where he was looking out the… cut ‘decorating’ the western half of the mansion. He also seemed to be ignoring Imoen entirely. “Thou mentioned that the dead god hath been preparing to assimilate ye but that the progress he’d done over the past decade and a half was undone.”

“That’s right.”

“That means he will be unable to destroy ye and will have no choice but to cast thee out or at least thine soul even if he wins when thou next fall asleep.”

“I believe so.”

“Excellent.” The old man turned to look down and waited for his gaze to be met before speaking again. “Then if worst comes to worst, we will merely reincarnate thee.” Something tightened in the dwarf’s chest and he didn’t know what it was. Whatever it was, it must have shown on his face as well as Elminster noticed it. His voice took on a softer cant than he’d used until then. “One way or another, lad, ye will come back from this.”

The man left, then, to prepare his spells and have his necessary hours of rest, so Cyrus turned to look at Selûne as he often did after dark. Even so, he could not help but wonder what if.

What if he _did_ get consigned to oblivion? What then?

…

He’d need to have some _words_ with Khelben Arunsun before his time was up.

“-.  .-“

They set off as soon as the wizards three all rose from their rest and joined the young dwarf and woman for a quick breakfast, a fairly luxurious fare even so, served by the spectral servants. After Khelben dismissed his conjured abode and checking to see if the Mind Blank was still in place – _it was, Bhaal seemed entirely cut off from the waking world for now_ – they headed north.

They only travelled for a few hours, however, at which point they veered off the road and quite a distance into the forest to look for a spot more out of sight where Khelben could summon his mansion again.

“No more outrage over this not being a proper experience in adventuring?” Imoen quipped at the oldest man there.

“Seeing as the lad won’t be sleeping a wink and thou and Gorion will likely take turns resting to keep him company, there be little point to advocating the all too real benefits of sleeping in a proper ditch for the sake of experience.” Elminster fiddled with the pipe he was smoking as he said that, barefaced. “We shall have to settle for the sub-par shelter of yon Khelben’s Magnificent Mancave.”

Said man threw the other achmage a cross look. “What he _means_ is that we need to fortify and ward our position against scrying before we start to meaningfully take steps against a power, even a dead one.” The Archmage conjured a new version of the mansion before speaking next. “Ideally we would do this at the spot of the ritual itself, but the Friendly Arm Inn does not exactly lend itself to such personalised infringements on others’ property and Bentley Mirrorshade runs a strict community, for all that he used to be an adventurer at one point, and a thief at that.”

“I don’t think you ever explained why we need to do it there,” Imoen said. “Wouldn’t it be easier and safer to just do it out here where there’s less chance of someone dropping in on us?”

“You mean other than the too real chance of the Bhaal remnant ripping at the Weave tapestry making up the mansion and killing us all or worse?” Gorion asked drily as he moved about, marking points where portable ward stones would go.

Imoen winced. “Yeah, besides that.” A pause. “I mean, it’s not like we _need_ the mansion, is it?” It must have pained her to say that, given how much she loved the service and comforts that came with it.

“It be thematically appropriate to use the Inn,” Elminster said from where he moved in Gorion’s wake and magically digging holes for the stones. “Also, ritually significant enough to mayhap give an edge to the final setup. A minor one, but an edge all the same. I believe ‘tis clear we canst in good conscience forgo such.”

Imoen looked at Cyrus, uncomprehending.

“The Friendly Arm was once a holdfast controlled by one of Bhaal’s priests by the name of Mericor,” the dwarf supplied helpfully. “Said priest was killed in human form. Then he was killed in his undead form. The latter involved the destruction of most of the keep interior and a fair bit of the surrounding countryside.” Hope’s light fluttered comically behind her eyes at his bland retelling but Cyrus wasn’t quite done yet. “Then, as you know, about 20 years ago the unclaimed fortress was finally cleared of the remaining monsters and turned into an inn with its own walled community by the good gnome Bentley Mirrorshade.”

“Huh,” Imoen blinked a few times before frowning in thought. “So it’s a site where Bhaal, or at least his influence on this plane and region, was defeated for good.”

“In a three-step process even, yes,” Cyrus nodded, absently scratching Arawn’s jaw. “Defeat–destruction– _reclaiming_.”

Imoen hummed but didn’t look altogether convinced of the viability of that plan. “Doesn’t Bentley have rules against this sort of thing we’re planning to do on his property though? Wizards’ left thumbs peace-bonded to their belts and all that?”

“A trivial thing to overcome,” Elminster waved her off. “As for the rest, we shall simply have to go with asking for forgiveness rather than permission. After all, a soul is on the line.”

The three wizards spent that first day warding the area to a ludicrous degree which the two Chosen of Mystra nonetheless only deemed “barely adequate on account of them being mere temporary arrangements.”

The young dwarf spent that time using Alter Self to regrow his hair, beard and mustache until he looked like a proper dwarf again. It wasn’t strictly permanent but he knew enough of metamagic to make it so he only had to refresh the spell every few days. Good enough until they grew back naturally.

Metamagic. One of the many benefits of having an Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep for a father.

The second day abruptly took a turn for the ludicrous when Elminster revealed what their strategy for “maximising their odds” was, since Cyrus’ divinely-inspired soul had been kind enough to offer the full ritual scheme on a silver platter and they did not need to invest more time in that. Specifically, the plan was using Wish over and over to enhance Cyrus’ attributes. _All_ the attributes. Five Wishes apiece to be specific.

Since they were pressed for time, Elminster said mildly, there simply was no recourse but for him to select an attribute, enhance it to the limit, then use one of the remaining Wishes to restore his entire spellcasting ability and repeat the process over and over and over again until he was done. And yes, there was a limit because five chained castings per attribute was the best arcane magic could handle apparently, before it was no longer a matter of addition/enhancement and more one of changing fundamental parts of the recipient’s mind and body. Which was never pleasant for anyone involved and fortunately impossible within the bounds of the wording.

Warding the area to kingdom come made a lot more sense all of a sudden.

So.

30 wishes in five sets apiece.

Well.

That happened.

Well, almost. Wishes stopped working to improve his intelligence after the second casting and they didn’t work to improve his Charisma at all.

“How very odd,” Elminster said after the Wish failed to take, looking quite puzzled after checking to make sure no stillness of death was involved. Confused, and not just on the inside.

It would have been the perfect cue for Khelben to say something or other but teacher was busy on the other side of the topiary garden – because yes, the mansion had one on the inside, somehow – doing to Gorion what Elminster was doing to Cyrus. “Seeing as his continued breathing is what’s kept you alive and functional all this time” had been his reasoning when Cyrus asked. He was not running into any obstacles, apparently, unlike Elminster.

Of course, that only meant Imoen got to comment on the development instead. “So his intelligence was near the more-than-mortal threshold and his charisma is already beyond ridiculous.” She shrugged. “I could have told you that.”

“I am sure,” the Sagef of Shadowdale said drily. “Because none of the rest of us would have seen… any… signs.” The man trailed off, then turned to stare at Cyrus, mouth ajar.

Cyrus did not fidget, but only because he did not feel the natural emotional response to that intense gaze since he didn’t feel much of anything.

“Well spank me rosy.” Elminster Aumar laughed to himself and stowed his pipe away. “Beyond ridiculous indeed,” he muttered, looking at the dwarf again. “I only intended to be in this region for a scant hour the other day and was entirely determined to stay neutral in the matter of Bhaal’s children. And yet here I am, abusing cosmic power on your behalf.” The ancient man squinted at the dwarf, as if trying to divine some fell trait that he could dub responsible for the utterly total way he’d been swept in another’s current.

Cyrus didn’t have to make guesses as to that. It was all there, in his soul.

“I don’t see it.”

Imoen turned around to hide a smirk. And some snickers. And possibly some disrespectful gestures.

“I don’t see it,” the man repeated. “But I suppose results speak for themselves,” the Archmage of Shadowdale sighed, smiling wryly. “Few are those who can claim to have commanded Elminster Aumar. Fewer still are those who can rightly claim to have actually made him obey.”

_WE’RE GOING! / They Went._

“And he did it all after drop-kicking you in the middle of the road to sit in the dust,” Imoen nodded sagely. “And yes, I am well aware of what drop-kicking really means, thank you.”

The white-haired and bearded human – Cyrus still liked Gorion’s facial hair better – glared sourly at the girl. “If I required commentary from the peanut gallery, lass, I’d have requested it.”

“Yes sir, sorry sir.”

Blatant lies, naturally.

Elminster knew it as well but switched to glare at Cyrus anyway.

“… I’m not going to apologise for the way our first meeting went,” the dwarf said stubbornly. “Everything I said still applies.”

“Oh woe,” the man despaired, supporting his eyes with his pipe-free hand. “Oh woe is me, that I shouldst be the subject of such ungratefulness! Especially after all I have and further intend to see done for thee.”

“I am, in fact, extremely grateful,” Cyrus replied with total sincerity. “Which is why I am willing to hold that matter separate from this one, even though the reason we got ambushed and Gorion nearly died and I ended up killing my first person which resulted in me going off the deep end is all because you sent Gorion that letter telling him-”

“Yes yes yes!” The Archmage waved him off and left. “Perhaps the extra wisdom thou just gained will allow thee to reassess thine opinions regarding certain _relevant parties_. Come, girl! ‘Tis your turn to submit yourself to my ministrations.”

Imoen pointed at herself. “Wait, really? I get to be-“

“Did I not speak proper common, lass? Come along!”

She went, though she couldn’t help herself from one last comment. “There are no words to say how _wrong_ the way you said it sounded, by the way.”

“I am sure thou will have many more misgivings to voice by the time I am done messing with thine body and mind.”

“I knew it! Old men are perverts!”

“And afterwards thou may stay and watch as I do to the lad’s wolf precisely what I am about to do to thee.”

“… You’re messing with me on purpose, aren’t you?”

“-. .-“

The Friendly Arm Inn was a peaceful place.

_You wouldn’t know just from looking at it that it used to be a murderclub._

It had trouble with occasional hobgoblin raids, and the iron crisis plus the increased bandit activity in the region had made caravan routes more dangerous, but that only made it more important as a waypoint. Bentley ran a tight house security-wise, even though he allowed visitors to get what lodgings and merriment they could.

_Stone-faced guards turned white upon the introduction of the three elders of their motely party. Double-takes caused by Arawn were barely repressed in their wake, but none stopped them until they were near the large, main staircase leading up into the common room._

The main common room was one level above ground. Good defensive placement. Well maintained too, and clean. Completely steeped in bloody history and wisp-like visions of undeath passing in and out of Cyrus’ second sight, but at least there were no ghosts, and the energy was hale. Gellana Mirrorshade had done well by this place.

_Intimidated bouncers barely kept their voice level as they explained that no animals save for cats were allowed inside the inn itself. Arawn growled and snarled at anyone who got too close._

Fortunately there weren’t too many people. It was doubtful that any one of them would have enjoyed being subjected to the temper of a wolf that was now fully capable of killing a werewolf with another werewolf. Cyrus had eventually managed to talk him into waiting outside. The dwarf pondered the odd, nearly human-level intelligence that his wolf possessed, even discounting the spells that had been used to make him better in every way.

 _Quite an odd case, that._ Elminster had commented. _I’ve cast some scans over the past days. Oddly, even with Mystra’s Grace I can only speculate, but mine leading theory is a retroactive effect of such and such that will happen at some point in the future. Specifically, thine wolf over yonder will be gaining outright sapience at some point._ The Archmage had glanced at him then. _Likely at thine hands, given how attached and loyal to ye he is despite all good sense._

As he followed the others through the large doors, the lone dwarf tuned out their introduction and dealings with a certain married couple – _Khalid and Jaheira_ – and the rather astonished innkeeper – _bright, optimistic soul stunning in its stability and sanity, highlighting the jarring lack of the latter in Mystra’s Chosen, though Khelben’s seemed a lot better off than the other one_ – in favour of checking and re-checking to make sure that the Mind Blank was on, along with the many other empowering spells that had been cast, Wished or applied to them all via potions or magic items earlier that day, just before they left the site of their preparations behind. That and his wolf.

 _Yes_ , Elminster had noted after that comment on Arawn’s odd behaviour despite no physical or magical reason for it, at least prior to the enhancement. _That does, indeed, mean that thou will survive or come back from this. Apologies if thou expected suspense._

At this point it wasn’t exactly himself he was worried about inasmuch as he could feel worried at all. He stared at his teacher’s back as his Father led him up the stairs to the suite on the very top floor.

_You will be perfectly alive and capable of doing it yourself for many years. But since you asked, yes, I promise to take care of your father should the worst come to pass. Whether or not he will be around for me to worry over, however, will be entirely up to him._

Blunt words but honest. Then again, it wasn’t surprising from the only one of those three people who’d actually suspected some of the implications in how the enchantments turned out over the years and the fact that Cyrus’ level of taint only got higher, not lower.

_Nothing I ever thought up even begins to measure up to this situation, however._

And yet the man had pushed forward with the plan anyway and taught Cyrus all the fundamentals he needed to be able to create practically any magic item, from scrolls and potions to weapons, armours, tattoos and anything else.

_You deserved all the moments of peace and whatever semblance of life I could give you._

Watching the Waterdhavian assist Elminster and Gorion in writing the three-pronged magic circle into the floor – Bentley would be incensed – Cyrus figured that perhaps he really did possess a ludicrous level of charisma. He doubted it, though, no matter what the spell of Wish said. If he really had such a thing, he’d have been able to say the right thing the right way whenever he wanted rather than just by accident.

He wondered if lacking a full range of emotions gave the Wish spell false positives. Technically emotions played a part in Wisdom and even might, but perhaps Charisma was too abstract to be properly measured without it? Would gaining a full range of emotions make things better or worse?

Those questions would have to wait, unfortunately. Or fortunately, depending on one’s view. The Ritual Circle was ready.

“Right then,” Elminster said, warding the room for silence. “Now we just wait for the best time frame.”

Meaning an hour or so past midnight, to make it three days since he produced the ritual notes and proceeded to emulate his father in the fine art of setting forests on fire. So a few hours of everyone spending their hours in silence, checking and rechecking the circle, checking and rechecking the ritual notes, and in Gorion’s case sitting with Cyrus on the bedside and hugging him (well, as much as his greater bulk allowed) until there was no more time to wait.

For his part, Cyrus filled that time with conjuring a detailed and thorough chronicle of everything he’d read off Sarevok Anchev and his henchmen, as well as the more worrisome individuals they’d passed by in the common room. Like that half-orc who’d slaughtered several villages, among other things. That self-absorbed blackguard would have to be taken care of for the peace and justice of everyone else, preferably soon. Khelben would likely be willing to do it, the same way he’d incinerated that duo of Zhent Necromancer and Halfling assassin he’d mentioned in passing to Gorion while having dinner the eve before the nightmare.

Through it all, said Archmage gradually gathered the entire stack of papers without reading even a word. Then, when they were all finished, he took the whole stack and stored it in a pocket of holding before anyone could say anything.

_I won’t be reading it and neither will anyone else. If worst comes to worst, I will bring it out. If not, I’ll burn the whole thing. Rather extreme and random, I know, but I find myself simply **dying** to hear it all from you, Little Prince, so mind you don’t stay unconscious too long._

Cyrus had stared at the man. Gorion had stared at the man. Elminster had stared at the man. Even Imoen had stared at him.

Possibly seeing something of herself there.

It was an odd contrast for her. Or perhaps it wasn’t, not then, seeing as the most unnerving part of it all was that Imoen was completely quiet the whole time since the ritual circle’s completion. It made Cyrus wonder about her even more than her apparently arbitrary decision not to sing or play anything since she brought him to his senses in the forest.

Granted, she’d been a bit more subdued than normal since Elminster Wished superlative competence into her, even accounting for the hit in mood from knowing Cyrus was quite possibly going to die or worse, but still.

But as he’d said, there was no more time to wait.

Seeing that Elminster, Khelben and Gorion had taken their assigned spots, the dwarf walked to stand in the middle. He gave himself a few moments to close his eyes and bask in the lights cast by his Father, teacher and… whatever Elminster qualified as. There were many overlapping emotions, but the clearest were stubborn hope, hopeful faith and… well, just simple determination in the case of the foremost of Mystra’s chosen, respectively. Technically, for Father – and even Khelben, surprisingly – those were their second most intense emotions, but Cyrus had never been able to feel love even when he so clearly saw it, and this time was no different.

Then Imoen, who was sitting on the edge of the upended bed on the far side of the room, set out her instruments and [started to play her lute](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VoB5kpr5EE). Her soul-light was bright enough to reach through him even from that distance, easily, despite her uncharacteristically sombre mood as she sung for him a dirge.

Far from the worn path of reason  
Further away from the sane  
He battles his shadows and demons  
Fighting to light the way

The tension that had descended over the room dispersed due to the surprise of the music, though two of the three Wizards were conflicted on that unexpected development. But while the notes Cyrus had written had excluded Imoen from the ritual entirely, there had been one sheet of paper with one sentence written out in large, bold letters.

And the dust and the dirt cloud his vision  
Onward he strides unafraid  
He fights the good fight for good reason  
A star that refuses to fade

One sentence written out in large, bold letters simply stating “Imoen gets to do whatever, whenever, however she wants.”

Still he braves his path...  
Still seas only laugh

She was dirty and wild when he found her  
She saw him through child's eyes  
He fell for the spell she was under  
Each day a brand new surprise

And he watches with strange curiosity  
He wants so much to believe  
Trying to break the chains of reality  
Dying to set himself free

Gorion clenched his fists and his mouth tinned in a grim line, but his soul surged into a mighty, enduring blaze of three-fold lavender/gold/blue fire.

Still he braves his path...  
Still seas only laugh

Khelben firmed too, soul igniting much the same way, and Elminster readied himself as well no less affected by the tune even if just due to the sheer surprise of how appropriate it was. Then father began casting his last part in the setup and the other two followed.

Though he may appear tattered and broken  
His soul is shabby and bare  
Still he glows like the flame of a candle  
With passion of one who still cares

There was always a rhyme to the reason  
Peering out from tired eyes  
The truth finally came in treason  
So wrong, but so justified...  
So wrong but so justified...  
Still seas close their eyes…

A stone-hard mien – _you can be quite unnerving, son, with the way you gaze at people the way you do_ – softened despite itself as dwarven eyes drifted completely shut. Whatever happened to those beautiful lies of before? Is this what lullabies are now, little sister?

Then his chest erupted in agony both inside and outside the nightmare as the Dagger of Bone was violently wrenched out.

The pain nearly made him stagger and fall over and the shock nearly sent his soul flailing as it threatened to drown, as it always did when he awoke in the depths of that dead ocean.

That was fine.

Even though the Dagger of Bone unerringly shot at his silver cord.

Even as the dagger reached its target and severed it in one, clear cut.

Even though Bhaal took that chance to weigh on the fact that Cyrus was a killer, one of _his_ – _an homage to me through your every act –_ and put all his will into casting him out.

It was fine.

Nothing happened.

For all that there had been 250 pages on the ritual, the whole setup was ultimately fairly straightforward and simple. A three-fold scheme whose only roles were unbreakably clear.

First, put him to sleep. The unexpected influence of Imoen’s song seemed to have allowed him to keep a certain level of awareness of the Prime Material, but the stage had carried out as planned.

Second, keep him anchored in the waking world – _I won’t let him have you –_ no matter what Bhaal did. The Vestige of the madman shuddered in shock at the greatest expression of its will being so contemptuously thwarted.

And three, keep his awareness linked to the three Wizards until they finished casting, which they just had.

Yes, ultimately the ritual was rather straightforward and simple, its ultimate goal to enable the Wizards to target his soul rather than the body in his waking world when they synchronously cast Wish.

Wish with the added benefit that whatever fledgling hold he had on the divinity trying to kill him would allow him to see fulfilled the spirit of the each Wish rather than the letter.

The fact that enough spiritual light made it through from the other side to burn the blood inside and immediately around him and allow him to talk – insofar as he could be said to talk when dealing entirely in metaphors – was just a bonus.

Yes.

Three Wishes.

All three for him to use as he _Wished_.

“ **I Wish to Live**.”

The ideal – a star with no room for Shadow due to BELIEF in her right to happiness.

The method – a teacher who changed his entire nature when at last excising paranoia from JUSTICE.

Reason. A Father who gave him CHARITY even before he grew to love him, for all that it barely took any time at all.

The depths of the ocean of blood ignited all around him as light and flame erupted through him. The hole in his heart filled and healed instantly as the countless drops that were the wasted shards of his soul burst into light as well, a field of stars all throughout that giant sea.

**“I Wish to Be Whole.”**

The stars, one and all, shot towards him in a funnelling whirlpool of warm, incandescent light that made him with each new moment feel that he was becoming more and more.

The Vestigial will was reeling from stunned outrage. _“You… You are **strange** among your kin. I should devour you! How do you stand!?”_

On his feet. Also, he was floating. And he had one more Wish.

**“I Wish for My Claim and Authority to Be Fully Recognised Upon ALL that I Am.”**

The entirety of that wold-spanning ocean jerked as if it were the water in a crystal ball that had just been shaken. Bhaal’s Vestige howled in consciousness-battering shock and a dawning spark of desperation that it tried to pretend didn’t exist even though it definitely did.

Then it was like a battering ram had been rammed into him, from _all_ sides, even as his soulfire continued to burn everything around him, turning shadow to light.

That was fine too.

Even though Bhaal’s assault was only meant as a distraction.

Even though the Dagger came hurtling from the darkness, right at the spot between his eyes.

His hand lashed out.

The dagger came to an abrupt stop with its tip between his fingers.

That knife, too, had been made from part of All that He Was.

The ocean seemed to stall, not understanding a whit of what was going on.

No more three-fold actions and plans then?

That was _especially_ fine, because _he_ still had one.

CHARITY, JUSTICE and BELIEF rose around him, a closed loop of independent halos spinning concentrically around him like kinetic orbitals. They were Planar Tides meant to keep balance in check. They were light meant to keep the dark at bay. They evoked that little Planar concept known as The Unity of Rings

They were also a distraction.

A son reached out for the blood of his father and, grabbing it more with his mind than his soul-shaped body, _pulled inwards_.

A stream of Bhaaltaint surged towards him unimpeded by the enfolding Halos – _the spinning rings of sunfire cut and stymied the source but never stopped it entirely, keeping only the stream steady and manageable_ – reached his hand and was absorbed into his own self.

Then kept going.

The desperation so well hidden behind self-righteous outrage suddenly became an eruption.

 **_No!_ ** _**Impossible**! **NO!**_

With supreme effort, the remnants of a dead madman brought the whole ocean under control for a moment.

But _only_ a moment.

The next, Bhaal’s son mentally grabbed _all_ the essence _all_ around him and _pulled_.

The dead god’s will still held much sway, and the control exerted over the taint grew stronger the farther from Cyrus it went, but that was no reassurance at all to an entity who’d just realized that he did _not_ deal in foregone conclusions anymore.

The dwarf smiled grimly as the endless depths nonetheless begun to drown in _him_ for a change in spite of all the efforts Bhaal, or what was left of him, put into stopping it.

Bhaal’s remnant howled without howling and flailed angrily – _a storm of violent tides and winding undertows_ – as he looked for any way to rob his self-disowned son of this one moment.

Even if it meant ignoring him entirely and hurling his hate and rage at the waking world now that said son wasn’t able to keep a lid on the link in anymore.

Unacceptable.

Three halos flared with three-fold brilliance as an already strong grip tightened even further on the Dagger of Bone.

Well, Cyrus Anwar. You got what you wanted. You have your will, you have your soul and you have a tiny little knife that’s been embedded in your chest since you were a boy.

Now fight a god.


	12. The Truth Finally Came in Treason

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With this we finish the Tutorial.
> 
> Next up, Gorion interlude.

Death: the cessation of all vital functions. The state of being no longer alive. The cause or occasion of loss of life.

There were many other definitions and interpretations of the term: a cause of ruin, extinction, even the passing or destruction of something inanimate. Paradoxically enough, however, Bhaal's portfolio didn't cover them at all, at least not inherently. Abstract reinterpretations seemed to be a thing of mortals, with some of the alternative definitions rather counterintuitively being classified as completely different portfolios held by other Powers. Talos and Gruumsh were gods of destruction, Tempus was the god of war, Bane was the god of hatred and tyranny. All those things were waged or enforced at least partly via death (murder, execution, starvation, accidents, collateral, etc.) and/or destruction in practice. But the portfolios were bizarrely considered separate nevertheless. There was some crossover in terms of power and spells between the deities, with most or all of them possessing the "destruction" spell domain if nothing else, but the portfolios nevertheless seemed to be designated as nearly or entirely distinct.

Perhaps a case could be made for gods seeing things more "clearly," unencumbered by the lack of perspective or insight that made mortals think in terms vague enough as to give rise to such things as philosophy, but considering that gods like Oghma and Deneir existed and encouraged such things, Cyrus doubted it. More likely the reverse was true.

It all seemed suspiciously contrived.

Ironically, it also meant that Cyrus developed the way he did precisely _because_ he did not have to think along the specific lines that the portfolio demanded. The simple matter was that the Bhaal remnant, as much as he liked to pretend he didn't, no longer held the portfolio of death, or even the sub-section of Murder. Cyric did. Bhaal's divine essence worked as if it still did, but that was more because Bhaal had been the god he'd been for so long that he'd forgotten how to be anything else.

As he hung in the centre of the Gimbal of Three-Fold Unity, Cyrus Anwar wished he could allow himself a moment to appreciate the irony of Bhaal's plan. Had the vestige's plan to take him over worked, the would-be god would have been blinder than a bat. The reason was simple really: the academic definition of death notwithstanding, Cyrus considered death as a synonym for destruction and entropy equally valid as definition. It was why the things he traced broke down to pieces and dust. It was why he saw lines of death on people and objects alike. Far from the death and murder as defined by the god's own domain.

Perhaps Bhaal would have still managed to see things normally, or kept the perception of hearts, blood and everything else anatomically likely to cause death if assailed. Perhaps he would still have seen souls. Either way, the ability to inflict entropy on things and people regardless of where vitals were placed would not have worked for him. That was entirely Cyrus' accomplishment.

The dwarf smiled grimly as he assimilated the Bhaaltaint, turning it from murder/death/kill to quiet/stillness/peace and from bleak/dark/nothing into calm/bright/anything. All his life he'd been subconsciously changing the nature of the essence, the _domain_ if the term even applied, according to his view of things. It was a bitter irony that his full BELIEF in his interpretation of destruction as _death_ actually worked in Bhaal's favour. Allowed him the hold it did, the level of influence on him despite Cyrus' active rejection of the intruder for all those years, remembered or not.

Maybe that was why Bhaal had seemed so eager to assimilate him as well, rather than keep trying to cast him aside after the first few tries failed? The new perspective?

Torm had effectively devoured the souls of a whole settlement in order to slay Bane during the Time of Troubles, so the idea was not without precedent. Torm had gone for the brute force approach, granted, but considering what mortals could do to souls, with magic or just mere fists and words, the hypothesis was actually quite likely. Those scattered mentions and rumours about the Thay Academy of Shapers and Binders came to mind.

Well, no more. Cyrus knew what he had been doing now. He wasn't going to stop or leave before he did to that ocean what he subconsciously did to the trickle of essence that made it to his waking self as Bhaal kept pushing his own essence into his soul with that dagger of his, for half-again a decade.

His grip on said knife refused to falter as he sensed the vestige marshalling its will for another attack, but the shock of the collision, for lack of a better term, never came.

Instead, the vague awareness of the waking world gave him the strange and worrying impression that his body had just ruptured at random all over. Minor lesions at best, even on the skin or softer organs, and his bones hadn't been harmed in the least, but for it to occur at all...

The dwarf glared and willed even harder, clamping down on the advantage of the steadily rising divinity he had under total control to accelerate the conversion rate.

Bhaal attacked him in the waking world again. Then again. Then twice more. Each time the effects worsened. Marginally, but the severity stacked to the point where even the passive regeneration that resulted from Elminster's Wishing spree was overcome. Cyrus could understand what the dead god was doing, or trying to: distract him, force him to split his attention between the essence conversion and wresting mastery of the link to the Prime. Failing that, he wanted to at least harm him in the waking world to the point where he had to make a choice between continuing the absorption or being severely harmed, perhaps even crippled or killed. The odds of the latter weren't likely but…

Bhaal struck again – rage, outrage, spite, hatred _I'll rip you to pieces!_ – and Cyrus' physical self lurched in place as his muscles and skin tore in a myriad of different places.

Cyrus snarled. He could see it now, the dead thing's plan. Hit him in the real world to the point where he has to break off the conversion and reassert control of the link or die outright. Cyrus would wake up and go on to live a number of days, weeks, months or years of having to do this again every night, hoping during waking time that Bhaal didn't manage to convert all of the essence _back_. Did the Vestige think the three Planar tides would leave him in the meantime? Did he plan to whisper sweet seduction in his ears? What?

Bhaal attacked him in the Prime again, only for the damage and all the prior injuries to be healed right after.

Gorion.

Implacable. Fearless.

Not at all hidden behind cover, unlike the two Archmages who'd made barricades out of the furniture and were fruitlessly trying to convince Gorion to get into cover as well.

Father.

Using the Staff of Healing for all it was worth. How many charges were even left anyway?

The dead god howled without howling – it was strange to perceive things in that place, whatever it was – but attacked again, and again and _again_ , each time more desperate even as Cyrus continued to convert bleak/dark/nothing into calm/bright/anything while failing to restrain his grin every time the damage to him was undone.

Go dad.

The next moment wiped the grin off his face.

Half the reason was Bhaal suddenly ceasing any and all resistance against his essence conversion, which sent him mentally reeling from the sudden progress and resulting lapse in control over the existence of ten times the prior amount of converted divinity.

The other half was Bhaal switching all that will and attention to the Prime. Or, rather, what it resulted in.

Cyrus' bones creaked, muscles tore, skin burst open all over as bleak/dark/nothing poured out into the world like sick smoke that somehow glowed a green unlight amidst the spray of blood. That alone would have been bad enough, but the dead madman then hurled it all outward – _connection too thin, will stymied, quantity greater than control, result? Success regardless due to nature of Bhaaltaint to seek and claim lives of others_ – and managed to shape part of it like a whip of smoke that lashed Gorion across the front.

The man tried to dodge but didn't quite manage.

Cyrus' conversion of essence stalled at the momentary, startlingly clear view of his father swaying sideways, looking surprised as his left arm came apart at the shoulder.

Then the dwarf released the first scream of his own since his soul was ripped into when he was five – _lash out, self-might shaped to spear through the murk and_ _ **deny**_ _before that happened a second time_ – and clamped down on the link to the Prime, slamming his will against the dead thing's just as his hand lashed out in the waking world and grabbed onto the smoke-mist cord the moment it was about to plunge into Gorion's forehead.

Father fell the rest of the way to the ground, two walls came between him and the arrested tendril of spite, each of hard, pure diamond as real as anything else in the world – _Elminser Aumar. Khelben Arunsun._ _Spell of Major Creation. No magic to make_ _ **still**_ _or rip open like in the past_ – but not before Imoen hopped over the wizard's fallen form and slipped through just as the diamond walls surrounded Cyrus entirely, trapping her in there with him.

Then the crazy lady smacked the evil smoke thing with her lute as if she was disciplining a puppy with a rolled-up paper.

What.

The Bhaal tendril reared back in stunned shock which was mirrored perfectly in wherever-they-were. Cyrus didn't blame the mad thing seeing as he himself wasn't much better. Even though he barely got vague notions of the Prime from all the way across the Planar boundary, he glimpsed more than enough to figure out what was happening. In no small part due to Imoen working on her end of the link herself, not realising the effect she had on him, as usual.

Imoen started a beat on the – entirely whole and spotless – lute belly while she strummed the cords eight times, then tossed the instrument away – it came to a slow hover and continued to play the beat alone as it floated languidly – then brought her sharn to her lips and started to play that instead, going through a short medley once, then a second time before tossing the sharn off as she did her lute.

Then she started to skip around and sing.

She came to me one morning  
One lonely Sunday morning  
Her long hair flowing  
In the midwinter wind

I know not how she found me  
For in darkness I was walking  
And destruction lay around me  
From a fight I could not win

Ah ah ah a-a-ah a-a-ah

Ah a-a-ah a-a-ah

Ah ah ah a-a-ah a-a-ah

Ah a-a-ah a-a-ah

Cyrus Anwar suddenly didn't understand anything.

She asked me name my foe then  
I said the need within some men  
To fight and kill their brothers  
Without thought of love or god

And I begged her give me horses  
To trample down my enemies  
So eager was my passion  
To devour this waste of life

Hope was little sister prancing, skipping from one foot to the next as she dodged half-hearted swipes by the bewildered Bhaaltaint. Hope was little sister as she sung words pulled from of nowhere, as was usual whenever she did something completely outrageous and wanted to get out of it. Hope was little sister flirting with death literally while singing _blatant lies_.

But she wouldn't think of battle that  
Reduces men to animals  
So easy to begin  
And yet impossible to end

For she's the mother of all men  
Who counselled me so wisely that  
I feared to walk alone again  
And asked if she would stay

Hope was a dancing star of sunfire gliding and hopping here and there as her music followed her from both outside and inside the diamond cage they both were in. Music that she suddenly didn't feel was good enough, so she pulled her fiddle out from under her cloak, cancelled the shrinking spell on it and added its tune to the other two.

Bhaal suddenly panicked – _Realisation? Epiphany? Confusion? What?_ – and started pelting the inside of that diamond sphere all over, smoketaint lashing, breaking and flying every which way, missing her every time despite that she looked like she was just skipping or swaying randomly. Gracefully too. It was like watching that hapless monk of several years back do his best to take off all his clothing layers one by one after falling afoul of the Spork of Flaying.

Oh, lady, lend your hand outright  
And let me rest here at your side  
"Have faith and trust in peace," she said  
And filled my heart with life

There is no strength in numbers  
Have no such misconception  
But when you need me  
Be assured, I won't be far away

It… Bhaal was _blinded_. Imoen was just too _bright_ so he couldn't even begin to guess where she was at all. And Imoen had no way of knowing that. She'd just jumped in like... like…

Thus, having spoke, she turned away  
And though I found no words to say  
I stood and watched until I saw  
Her black cloak disappear

My labour is no easier  
But now I know I'm not alone  
I'll find new heart each time  
I think upon that windy day

Her cloak was _pink_ , and what was this about labour? At this point neither Bhaal nor Cyrus were… doing… anything.

Oh Imoen, you wonderful, _wonderful_ madwoman!

She came to me one morning  
One lonely Sunday morning  
Her long hair flowing  
In the midwinter wind

And if one day she comes to you,  
Drink deeply from her words so wise  
Take courage from her as your prize  
And say hello from me

The lyrics trailed off along with the tune itself and Imoen was right in front of Cyrus, looking down at the mass of bleak/dark/nothing that hovered like a lobotomised cloud all around him. Bhaal had all but forgotten to try and bother shaping it into anything coherent at this point, stuck as it was in the deepest throes of what's this I don't even-

"I've decided!" She proclaimed. Her self-light shone brightly, filling him and his immediate vicinity entirely. So entirely that it reached and filled the interior of his three-fold globe of protection, even there within those depths. "Stumpy here won't be the only one getting the benefits of eating you, mister Sir Snarls-a-Lot." She lifted her fiddle bow high above her shoulder as her other hand slowly reached out with grasping fingers towards the essence. "Come to momma!"

Bhaal reared back so suddenly and so filled with disgusted horror that not only did the smoketaint disappear from Realmspace entirely, the mad sliver of a dead god drew in on itself in that place as well. It would not have been inaccurate to say that the vestige was more horrified of the idea of Imoen absorbing him than the idea of Cyrus doing it. Never mind that she was completely incapable of doing such a thing, or even thinking up ways to do it.

Cyrus knew, now.

The Truth.

Hope was _completely insane_.

And she was also a distraction!

The _perfect_ distraction, because her stunt had made the unhinged dead god forget about him and their pitched battle of will entirely, for a moment. Probably because Cyrus had completely forgotten as well. Forgotten about converting the essence of even fighting Bhaal's will in the Prime. For the last six stanzas.

Had he been anyone else the dwarf would have wasted time being embarrassed, allowing Bhaal to get over its episode of being completely cut off from outside and inside reality while gibbering in horror at the thought of being Imoen-ized. It would have led to the two of them resuming the earlier situation, only without any outside healing this time and possibly a dead sister by the end of it, provided Cyrus didn't decide to fold and resign himself to an indeterminate amount of time of dream fights. It wasn't like he could leverage Wishes any more than he already had.

Fortunately, he'd had a whole 15 years to get used to acting logically and without hesitation, and as it happened Bhaal was not exerting any will on that ocean at all.

Well then.

_**Embody the Madness.** _

The Slayer reeled and slanted drunkenly as it suddenly found itself fully embodied and limited in power and will to that single body, if only for a moment.

That was fine, Cyrus only needed a moment. A moment to will himself into being right in front of the dead thing, duck under the startled swing of the pseudo-avatar and stab Bhaal in the heart with his own knife.

Cyrus Anwar felt himself take control of the entirety of that blood ocean for the very first time.

"I suppose this is the part where I'm meant to say something pithy." He wasted no time forming the three-fold sphere, though he switched it from protection to containment. There. He wasn't trapped there with Bhaal anymore. Bhaal was trapped there with _him_. "I am strongly tempted to do it too. Having a full range of emotion to call my own now, I find myself actually understanding why people indulge in the impulse to monologue." The Tides answered him immediately, as they'd done previously. "But instead, all I am going to say is this." He grabbed the corpse-looking thing by the throat with his free hand and willed the knife to _drink_. "For all that you have done, let **JUSTICE** be done at last."

Those words having been said, Cyrus decided to follow his Father's example in the noble art of solving problems.

Which was to say, he set everything on fire.

Metaphorically of course.

And he did mean _everything_. The essence, the rings, the inside of the rings, the outside of the rings, Bhaal's vestige, even himself. Everything all the way to the edges of what he now recognised as a demiplane drifting alone in the Astral Sea. It was a beautiful thing, the perfect evocation of Hope's sunfire made personal through the process inadvertently shown by Khelben Arunsun when his alignment changed so very spontaneously yet not spontaneously in the least. All of which would have been impossible, unwanted even, if the dwarf hadn't had a reason to try for it, or anything at all. A reason to follow when doing anything.

It was rather charming, really, how the word "reason" could mean two entirely different things but for both meanings to have equal relevance for his situation as they had had for all his actions in the past.

Bhaal's sliver struggled. Of course it did, and it even wounded Cyrus severely, fatally even, several times – _pull self-essence inward, replenish soul and spirit after each damaging retaliation, rinse and repeat_ – before its efforts faltered and the Slayer succumbed to the inevitable with a wheezing roar that tapered off into an oddly thick, low wail that shook the entire demiplane before there was nothing left of the foreign will at all, or the Slayer itself. Merely specks and swirls of black and green unlight that burned and changed like everything else. Then even those disappeared, transformed into quiet/stillness/peace coloured all shades of calm/bright/anything.

The three halos dispersed around him – _scattered like snowspray with the echoes of tinkling laughs_ – and Cyrus Anwar was left drifting, not quite capable of believing…

There was only him, finally. Him and an ocean of fire that burned without flame.

Was… was it finally over?

No one and nothing answered.

Something bubbled under the surface of his mind, took form in his chest, filled his lungs all the way to the brim then burst out.

Laughter.

For the first time in his life, Cyrus Anwar honestly, unreservedly laughed.

And laughed.

And _laughed_.

He wished he could claim it to have been a rumbling, pleasant laugh. Or he would have, had he the mind for it. As it was, he didn't.

He just laughed, and it was a hysterical thing expressing only disbelief. Hardly the sort of happy sound his father would have wished for him to-

The sound abruptly cut off.

_Gorion falling, surprised, arm coming apart at the shoulder._

Father.

How could he have forgotten!?

He turned his attention back to the Prime Material plane without any sort of grace or calculation, save what he needed to think up ways to use his newly mastered divinity for healing – _Will imposition to brute force the process? No, liable to leave long-lasting imperfections. Open a channel to the Plane of Positive Energy? Insufficient information or experience, method of filtering the energy into usable form unknown, likely to cause self-destruction if it worked at all. Base template off Saff of Healing then and go from there_ – but it turned out that whatever he intended to do would have to wait.

The moment he tried to open his eyes to the waking world, his awareness expanded in a vertigo-inducing wave, filling the whole room in an instant – _Imoen to the right, father ahead just behind the double diamond screen, Eminster and Khelben on either side, hurrying to his side, Bentley Mirrorshade half-stunned and half-distressed in the doorway_ – then cascaded outwards and through walls, floors, ceilings and beyond until it covered the entirety of Friendly Arm Inn and a fair way into the surrounding area. Several dozen souls came alight in his mind immediately, from the less troublesome ones like the loitering hobgoblin bands to the bounty hunter that had been dispatched to kill him and who was just entering the grounds. He'd have to be pacified as soon as possible – _Wizard specialist, evil, multiple bounties claimed, all of 250 gold or less, challenge minimal, best solution for securing the peace of all involved: death_ – along with that half-orc blackguard – _more blood on his hands than whole mercenary companies, several villages slaughtered down to the youngest babe, likelihood of current revenge quest enabling any sort of redemption: null, only solution for the inner and outer peace of all involved: permanent death_ – and possibly six or seven of the commoners currently taking advantage of the Inns's services. There were one or two matters involving the ones in the same room with him that that would have to be pacified as well – _Gorion's continued insistence on being a martyr, Khelben's involvement with a certain potion and Elminster's most recent paramour_ – and one plan of Imoen's that would need to be avoided to prevent Elminster from losing his own inner peace – _prevent theft of pipe, or alternatively deny Imoen the knowledge of the code words and phrases for the recall and activation functions_ – but those could wait. The specimens below were more problematic, and while some would balk at the idea the fact was that in a world like Toril peace relied on prevention as much as it did diplomacy, and it was a simple fact that for peace to work out some people simple _had_ to die-

Cyrus wrenched himself back from the Prime and secluded himself from everything, curling on himself in the middle of that ocean of liquid fire and gripped his head with both hands, shuddering all over. He almost hadn't managed to work up the thought or even intent to break off the… whatever it had been. Not the thought or the intention, let alone the will. He trembled as he tried to comprehend what had just occurred, and when he managed it he had to force himself not to suffer whatever equivalent of nausea there was… wherever he was.

With more urgency than he'd felt during all but the tensest moments while fighting the Bhaal sliver, he checked, rechecked and scanned the entirety of that ocean of divine essence for whatever bits and pieces he may have missed. Whatever specks could have caused… would have.

There weren't any.

There was nothing left of Bhaal, save for whatever dusty corpse now floated in the Astral Plane somewhere, if even that. Whatever happened with the other Bhaalspawn might or might not lead to his resurrection in the future but that didn't really matter to him now, not really. He doubted he qualified as a Bhaalspawn anymore even, since he had no essence of murder anywhere in that sea.

No murder essence and yet the first thing he'd done upon awakening had been to plan the premeditated murders of a bunch of people for the greater good. For the sake of _peace_.

_A realisation as a child. A gleeful god shard tearing, wrenching, taking out a piece of him. A Dagger of Bone that speared him in the heart and proceeded to fill him with the essence of murder, inch by inch with every month that went by._

Cyrus Anwar stared at the knife in his hand. He wished he could blame it for that perceived lapse, but it was his entirely, just like the calm/bright/anything as everything else in that place. Which only left…

Himself.

His scan of himself was frantic, desperate, mind and soul turning to behold itself all the way to the core, and when that didn't reveal anything he went deeper, and when that didn't yield anything he looked sideways, downwards, upwards and every other direction all at once, even directions that weren't directions. When even that wasn't enough, he set a sliver of his mind to the Prime and scanned his physical body – _**only**_ _his physical body_ – down to the smallest organ, then the smallest cell, then beyond even that until he saw the bonds that held in whole against natural forces. He found nothing.

Undeterred, he returned to his body entirely, save for whatever mind he needed to keep full awareness and control of the demiplane, then looked at everything again, all at once, not entirely surprised to see the material and immaterial parts of himself equal more than the sum of their parts would logically warrant. Still he found no trace of Bhaal anywhere, so he decided to try one last thing. Calling on the divinity he'd claimed, he filled himself as much as he could, then he looked at it and himself at once.

The first thing he found out was almost wondrous: the soul, the mind, the body, the spirit generated by them all, they were individually or together made of pieces of _all_ planes. Or was it that they were made of whatever had preceded the planes before they were separated? There were many questions and implications, all of which the dwarf would have loved to contemplate at length if not for what he found next.

What he found were chains.

Chains with hooks on every link.

He almost lost the vision due to the shock of that sudden… metaphor? Did the word even fit when seeing something so clearly and specifically depicted?

Reeling and needing time to come to terms with the implications, he looked… "away" to the other strange thing that had been revealed to him but which he'd nearly missed. Specifically, the Weave of Magic.

Or, rather, the two versions of it. The version on the Prime that was most definitely alive and the version in the Astral Plane which was… not. But wasn't dead or undead or whatever else either. It was… the Weave. And it worked just fine. Even more strangely, everything he'd become was telling Cyrus that the not-alive Weave was the natural one. The "normal" type of Weave of Magic.

It brought up a few things based on his very, very extensive readings in the past. Starting with how, looking at it from an outsider's perspective, the fact that Toril had its own Goddess of Magic was strange. For every other world in Realmspace and every other Plane the deity of magic was Boccob, with the one exception of Oerth which also had Wee Jas, but she was an intermediate deity effectively subordinate to the former. And nowhere in Boccob's portfolio (as sages knew it) was there anything saying that he maintained the Weave. Yet Toril's Crystal Sphere apparently needed its own greater deity over magic. Why? Otherwise irreversible damage during some divine conflict? Dawn War? No, that was just a tantrum by Lathander. The war between Gods and Primordials? Maybe, but accounts had Mystryl emerging from a mix of Selûne and Shar while the two were having their own squabble over whether Abeir-Toril should have light even before that mess of a conflict. Mystryl apparently emerged as a being inextricably linked to the Weave – for some reason – when Selûne hurled a piece of herself through Shar and… that was it. Now, every time Mystryl or her successors died, magic failed in the world entirely, or went insane.

And all the while, the Weave was just fine everywhere else.

Explanation? None ever provided in anything he'd read, and he'd read a _lot_. Hypotheses? The sundering of Abeir from Toril ripped the Weave at the seams or otherwise weakened it to the point where it didn't work? Possible, since the few records about Abeir say that the world has no magic at all and generally no other spell-like abilities either, save for innate feats like dragon's breath and some artefacts made of some material or other. Damage to the firmament of the Torilian crystal sphere that needed more active maintenance since? Possible but not likely, the world spun just fine after Karsus killed Mystryl, though granted that only lasted a very short time. Magic deity needed in order to keep the Weave on _this_ side of the Abeir-Toril split so that none of the Primordials or Great Dragons there can find their way here and cause problems? Not altogether unlikely, though with how many issues Toril already has it was unlikely that a new faction or two would really make much of an impact.

So… Toril's Weave was a patch in an otherwise natural and intrinsic layer of reality.

Setting the matter aside to be discussed with people who might know more (or not discussed, depending on how cagey Mystra decided to be and ordered her Chosen in turn to be), Cyrus decided he'd stalled enough and looked at the chains again.

Chains. Chains with hooks on every link. Hooks that he was caught in. Or, rather, hooks that had been driven through his mind, body, soul and spirit equally. Concepts. Narrow definitions.

The domains of gods.

Absurdly, something Father told him long ago came to the forefront of the dwarf's mind when he realised just what he was seeing.

_Listen well, son. A competent person should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, craft a masterwork, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently and die gallantly._

_Specialization is for insects._

Magical specialisation notwithstanding, he supposed.

Some of the short speech had been censored at first, before the truth of his parentage came out and Gorion couldn't justify his decision to keep his son away from the idea of slaughtering living things, even just for food. But eventually he'd shared with him the whole thing.

Cyrus wondered what Gorion would say if he knew he'd indirectly likened gods to insects. Amusement? Laughter? Embarrassment?

Cyrus only felt ill.

The chains hadn't even had the grace to just curl around him and at least pretend to be _gentle_ while playing tug of war with his soul. No, he literally had countless holes that hooks hung off in every direction, one for each chain, one chain for each godly domain. Just like there was one chain and one hook for every god in the souls of everyone else no doubt. All to syphon the power of Portfolios. A person's actions in life only determined which chain got to pull it furthest in its direction. The only "freedom" people had from this was rejecting the gods altogether, and that was not only a delusion but a sure way to the Wall of the Faithless and oblivion. Eventually. After a long time of horrible torment.

So…

Good news first. He wasn't insane just because he finally gained an emotional range wider than a teaspoon. However, he _did_ have a problem in that he'd aligned his essence with "peace" and the half of the concept that covered inner serenity, tranquillity and letting things go was already claimed. By Eldath to be exact.

The only deity of peace on Toril and she was a minor Power. If that didn't spell out just how terrible straits the world was in, nothing did.

Bad news, he'd be compelled to see things and act according to a new pair of tinted glasses from now on, if things were left as they were. Before it had been death – specifically murder – to the point where he equated entropy to it even though death was just a part of it in the grand scheme of things. The same way the stillness of death was just one type of peace.

And to think people wanted to be gods. They'd just be swapping this ugly, albeit sickeningly balanced, state of affairs for a single filter through which to perceive reality, becoming slaves to their narrow views versus being effective servants of all deities at once. Only Greater Powers had a better deal because they held multiple portfolios, presumably.

Cyrus pondered the fact that he felt sick despite that he was technically seeing and feeling things with his soul. If everything he saw was filtered through tinted glasses already, then perhaps his perception of godly domains as hooked chains was misleading and made things seem worse than they really were?

He tried to empty his mind and look at everything more objectively.

He managed.

Nothing changed.

Dammit.

Marshalling his will and patience, he looked away from the chains and instead looked outwards at the makeup of the Planes. How much of this would he accurately recall in the waking world, he wondered?

The Planar Tides unfolded around him, coursing in and out and through all layers of reality, each Plane infinite yet somehow adjacent to one, two or even more of them. Alien geometries did not even begin to describe what he saw, but he didn't try to puzzle things out let alone try to look beyond at the Far Realm or pull some other idiocy. That way lay madness.

Literally.

Then again, the Tides moving the Planes weren't much better themselves. He could even see some of what the three still enfolding him did. JUSTICE was actively holding a man prisoner in the Nine Hells for the greatest sin ever committed, one whose consequences continued to slowly kill the Planes even now. That could have been accepted, even though the man – _man that was_ _ **more**_ _or_ _ **other**_ _but still looked like a lone human, scarred beyond recognition to the point where his skin looked and felt like rock_ – was as much a consequence of the events he caused as he was an instigator. Even though it had been a long time since his character and soul had changed for the better. CHARITY seemed benign enough, until one saw that it effectively instigated people to sacrifice even when a different option was available or better. He thought of Gorion then and he nearly lost his focus.

And the Rule of Three… The Rule of Three was the worst, piling up unspeakable evil, obscenities and depravities to unleash upon a single man – _a king with a patchwork self and skin of gold_ – for the sole crime of choosing to have BELIEF in EXPERIENCE.

And Cyrus couldn't exactly blame those impersonal forces of reality for it either, not entirely. Everything else that was supposed to make sense was broken down and spread across the various divine domains, creating a hodgepodge of bonds pulling beings in every direction with just the vague leftovers loose to work as they – presumably? – did in the beginning.

This was Ao's _balance_.

Forget Imoen's antics, she was sane.

This…

This was _mad_.

Completely and utterly _mad_.

Right.

Right. That settled it.

He wasn't touching godhood with a ten foot pole.

Letting his mind loosen and rise from the depths of contemplation where everything was laid bare, Cyrus Anwar weighed his options, discarded the unacceptable ones, weighed the pros and cons of the few ones left and decided to go with something more outrageous than all of them put together.

First things first: separate from the essence.

Clamping down on the entirety of that demiplane, he enveloped it all the way to the borders in his will, then wrapped _around_ it and order it to pull on itself.

The interior didn't change in scope. Not really. But the outside did, shrinking and shrinking even as the interior stayed the same, until the wall passed over and through him, compressing the essence – _except not really_ – in a transparent sphere large enough to hold in both palms but small enough to balance on just one. The white fire that wasn't fire looked like a glimmering, bright cloud of liquid-thick smoke that shone with the light of everything. He'd evoked Imoen's shine and that of his father perfectly. His father back when he was still happy, or as happy as Cyrus had ever known him considering that the man was even then dealing with the trauma of having had his wife impregnated via rape by the worst kind of evil.

The tiny demiplane looked almost exactly like a really full, kaleidoscopic snow globe. Though did it really qualify as a demiplane if it could only hold his soul and divine essence? He peered closer and saw the Dagger of Bone floating aimlessly through the core of that ocean, but he didn't think that counted.

No matter.

Step two: dive back into the depths of awareness until all the chains and all the Tides are laid completely bare again. It went even easier the second time, showing that what he'd done didn't truly count as his essence being _separate_. He was certain it at least wouldn't unduly influence his mindset now, though.

Step three: Freedom.

Step one of step three bring all the chains, all the concepts all domains, all _Tides_ even, into your full awareness.

He immediately found that he couldn't manage it. There were too many, too different, too complex, impossible to understand entirely all at once. Which was ironic considering that they were ultimately a bunch of artificial creations who together meant nothing more and nothing less than _everything_. Specifically, "Everything I know and Am." Perhaps he couldn't look at them all because the leftover Tides qualified as missing puzzle pieces that prevented the full picture form forming?

That was okay. One by one then.

One by one by one.

Step two of step three: Replace the hooks.

The divinity poured out of the sphere, drained into his hands and filled him, coursing into and through him, then dove deeper. One by one the hooks were replaced. One by one. Grain by grain. Nothing truly changed, nothing even moved in him really. Not yet. Nothing but the ownership. The claim. He wasn't seeking to break or push or pull at anything, as the hooks were made half from himself, just like the Dagger of Bone. He wasn't going to rip out and cast away everything worthwhile about himself. It would not be freedom, it would be insanity or worse. Each time he finished one hook he moved to the next, starting with the ones belonging to the more unwholesome domains of the evil deities and working his way up the alignment scale until he reached the Good ones. The Good hooks – what an absurd notion – that at least seemed to have caught on the evil hooks as much as they had on the rest of him, as if to reduce the pull those worse domains had on him, and reduce the effect they themselves had by lessening their own. The final five actually stemmed from the same chain, one with links shaped like anvils and hammers, paradoxically enough.

Cyrus Anwar stared at them, conflicted.

Moradin All-Father. The Creator, Dwarffather and Soul Forger.

Was he, though? Did Cyrus' soul actually come from him or did… something else happen when Bhaal begot him? Going by the legend of the Axe of the Dwarven Lords and how it can turn other people into dwarves, dwarves which Moradin was always said to be ever reluctant to let go of and turn back into their original race, even if asked and served well. Based on that legend, Cyrus supposed it was an irrelevant question to ask himself whether his soul came from the Soul Forge or elsewhere.

The dwarf looked closer and tried to empty his mind of bias again. It didn't work much better than before, but the hooks did flicker into full hoops momentarily. Hoops wrapped _around_ him more than through him.

It still didn't deter him. He replaced those too.

There was as little reaction as ever. Which was to say, none. Not that shocking since this was doubtlessly supposed to be impossible and he technically wasn't changing anything anyway.

Not yet.

Once he was done with that, he continued to pull the divinity from the globe – _globe_ _no longer, it was much less than before now, much smaller_ – and did the same to the Tides, since they, too, had him tied up all throughout, though they were more like a net or web or tapestry. Just like the Weave.

He replaced that too.

Once everything was over – _it had only taken an eternity and no time at all –_ he checked, double-checked and re-checked ten or one hundred times everything, just to be sure he'd replaced every hook in his soul, mind, body and spirit alike.

Then he prepared himself for step three of step three and hoped he wasn't doing something supremely moronic.

Step three of step three then…

The Dwarf grabbed hold of all the hooks – _because they were_ _ **his**_ _now, even though he'd passed temporary ownership to whoever owned the chain for a moment_ – and commanded them to change from theirs/bound/whatever-concept-they-worked-by to me/myself/ **I.**

The chains, the Tides, the bonds of divinity, even the Weave snapped off, out of and away from him like taut bands of countless slingshots suddenly loosed.

Thus it was that Cyrus Anwar felt truly free for the first time in his whole life.

Freedom that the Universe decided it didn't approve of _at all_.

Odds of death:

The dwarf blanched.

The Tides shuddered all at once yet one by one at the same time. He even managed to get a final glimpse of the ones he'd called on before he dislodged himself from them completely. The Rule of Three faltered in setting up inevitabilities against an innocent demigod. CHARITY felt spurned and betrayed, insofar as an impersonal force of existence could feel anything. Deep within the Nine Hells, the hold that JUSTICE had on the man with no name – _except he was not really nameless anymore, not really_ – momentarily broke as it detected someone who'd committed a sin as bad as whatever the poor man had done far in the past.

And from somewhere on high, someone looked down on him, aghast.

So much for that ecstatic peace otherwise known as happiness.

The moment passed – _his awareness of everything faded as the last of his connection to anything and everything disappeared_ – and it was like the whole of _everything_ begun to turn to look in his direction on the tail of BELIEF, JUSTICE and CHARITY themselves. Though it felt more like he'd caused some deep ripples in a pond. Ripples had just travelled all the way to the edge of said pond and were now in the process of coming back to the centre. Coming back to the source and leading everyone and everything right to him.

Everyone and Everything that wanted to kill him.

Because Everyone and Everything wanted to kill him apparently.

And he did mean Everyone and Everything. Capital E.

Cyrus Anwar stared flatly at his approaching end even though he technically didn't see it beyond the infinity of the Astral Sea. Or feel it. Or otherwise sense it was coming anymore, save from the memory of a moment ago. He only knew the end was approaching because of how the odds of his death continued to mount. Was he even supposed to feel that if he'd just freed himself from… well, everything?

The truth finally came in treason, eh little sister?

And how did one add to infinity exactly? Infinity +1 was still infinity!

The dwarf slapped himself to try and regain his senses – _short moustache, stubby beard due to the incident of a few days ago, unacceptable, grow back right now and do something about that baldness_ – and decided it didn't work to bring him back to his senses at all. Not if the only effect was making him decide to grow his burnt hair back. And no, the fact that it happened both there and in the Prime Material was no consolation.

He contemplated the steadily mounting inevitability descending on him from everywhere and looked down at the demi-whatever in his hand. It looked like a small diamond now. Appropriately dwarvish, if nothing else.

Then the odds of death went beyond infinite certainty…

Only to suddenly drop to 95%.

Then 80%

Then all the way to 0%.

"-. .-"

An astrally-projected dwarf floated aimlessly in the Astra Plane, staring dumbly all around him. The grey… everything was decorated with the occasional floating rock drifting in and out of view, but otherwise remained entirely unremarkable. Full even.

Had… had whatever that had been passed him over? Why? How!?

He had absolutely no idea what had just happened. He hadn't done anything!

He waited for a while and no time at all…

Nothing happened.

He waited some more.

Nothing _continued_ to happen.

He was still alive.

…

Hysterical laughter burst out of him before he managed to slap his free hand over his mouth. Then he just rocked quietly in place, shaking for however long it took his hysteria to come and go, then come again another couple of times. He realised that at some stage since being given the death glare by the Cosmos he'd desynced from the Prime Material. That, at least, was fine. His crystal cord had reconnected the first time he tried to step back into the waking world.

Wiping sweat that really had no place on a spiritual body – _or did it? Was this like the Astral Projection spell or something else?_ – the dwarf gave himself a few more moments to get over the shivers and chill that had gripped him at whatever stage in that… whatever it had been. Figuring that if anything was going to look for him and try to end him in whatever fashion would have done it by now, the Bhaalspawn – _or was he now?_ – took stock of… whatever there was to take stock of.

Not much, as it turned out. A small diamond holding a knife and a cloud of quintessence – _power/claim/possibility entirely unaligned with anything now that he wasn't either_ \- a fully healed body, a fully healed soul and total liberty from anything and everything.

Including the Weave. It had pained him to do it, but leaving himself the subject of one Deity would have been a supremely stupid idea. Especially since said Deity would have been obliged to out him to all relevant parties immediately. If he'd lived somewhere other than where he did, maybe it could have been avoided. Alas, even if he held no particular fondness for Toril, his loved ones did live there.

Loved ones…

The happiness he hadn't been allowed to indulge in earlier filled and enveloped him like the warmest of all things.

It felt wonderful.

Enough to offset the realization that he'd entirely cut himself off from magic.

Or had he? It wasn't like he'd been casting magic the normal way, at least not for those handful of deliberately useless spells he'd studied with his unnatural eyes. The difference was that he knew what he'd been doing now. All that time he'd basically… poured out divinity, grabbed the Weave and shaped it in the appropriate way.

He looked down at the diamond in his palm.

Barely enough to cast level 3 spells. _One_ level 3 spell actually. Or one at a time at least, since the essence fortunately came back after use.

He had the small bead phase into his chest for safe keeping – _it was all a metaphor, really_ – as he thought back to the piles upon piles of Bhaal-charged enchanted items that were stashed all throughout Candlekeep's many vaults.

He'd have to drop by as soon as possible, and in the meantime he could at least leverage the charges stored in his Father's rods of absorption if necessary. Which, given how strange his life was becoming, meant that he'd likely use half or more of all charges currently available within minutes of… waking… up.

Father.

_Surprised. Swaying, losing balance as his arm came apart at the shoulder._

Cyrus Anwar cursed, spun around – _absolutely pointless, that_ – and woke up in the waking world with a full head of hair, a beard in need of grooming, a younger sister cautiously backing off and two walls of diamond between him and Father.

Gorion.

Standing, somehow, propped against the outer shell with his remaining arm while Khelben and Elminster were casting something or other. The man had, despite everything, held onto the Staff of Healing while being disarmed in the most literal fashion. His soul was a blazing mixture of terrified/stubborn/hopeful and his voice was hoarse but strong, somehow, as he yelled at Imoen, berating her for being foolish and asking what happened at the same time.

The dwarf pushed to his feet – _he'd fallen to one knee at some point?_ – and looked between the silent Imoen, her quiet but still floating instruments, and the diamond shell. The diamond shell and the lines of death all over it.

Well.

_Prestidigitation to create a nominally sharp implement._

Time to get to work.


	13. Interlude: Devotion Need Not Be Blind

As he toppled sideways, Gorion of Candlekeep had the odd thought that having one’s arm taken off at the shoulder should hurt more than it did.

The agony flared as soon as he thought about it.

Curses.

His vision went white for precious moments and he barely registered crashing shoulder-first into the ground. The next couple of minutes were… confused. A mixture of broken sounds, walls of some translucent gleaming material coming between him and his son, throbs of physical pain that radiated from where his left arm used to be and wracked his whole frame. And in the midst of it all, Imoen’s voice sounding… oddly muffled as she came up with another song out of nowhere. He didn’t quite catch all of it, or even half of it, but he knew she had never sung it before. And she _definitely_ never said anything like what she did when she was finished and… and…

Was she threatening to _eat_ Bhaal!?

The man surged to a seated position, or rather tried only to bump heads with Elminster and crash back to the floor with a pained moan that the Archmage echoed clearly nearby. Ignoring the distinct impression of a fizzling spellcasting and fighting through the confusion of his left hand never making the trip to his forehead to nurse the bump – _no left arm attached anymore, prestidigitation to clot the blood again, one of the others must have seen to it previously or he just forgot doing it the first time_ – and forced his eyes open as he pulled himself in an awkward roll – Khelben made a disagreeable noise from where he knelt next to him – and pushed off his remaining arm which had held onto the Staff of Healing, thankfully.

“Gorion, damn you, hold still!”

“After I… get… back to my feet-“

“At least take this healing potion-“

Gorion reached back, snatched the vial, downed it and tossed it aside in one move, ignoring the feeling of his skin knitting over his bloody injury.

“Oh for-!” Khelben cursed in Netherese and reached around to steady him. “If you’d just agree for me or Elminster to-“

“NO.” Gorion growled and used the staff as a pole to haul himself to his feet. He almost collapsed again when his vision swam and lightheadedness overtook him, but he managed to bull through it through sheer irritation. “What we discussed before still applies!” Which was to say they were _not_ to waste their Wish spells on him until his son was done putting that uppity Vestige in its proper place. Cyrus had been… quietly standing statue-still in the middle of the room for the past six hours and the Staff of Healing had only precious few charges left. They may well need those stronger magics for him in short order.

Honestly, must he handwalk them through this!?

“(And here I though the Little Prince was hopeless.) By that logic you needn’t push yourself like this!” The man didn’t approach further or reach for him though, thankfully. “You’re driving yourself into an early grave!”

Gorion felt the urge to roll his eyes but he was sure he would have blacked out due to the dizzy spell that would have caused. He decided to instead prop himself against the… diamond dome anchored to the floor, walls and ceiling through a myriad of thin, sharp prongs that made the whole setup look like one gigantic twin-layer thistle. Except on their side. The man put it out of his mind due to more confounding concerns. Like what on Toril went on in Khelben’s head. Gorion had lived exclusively for his son for the past 20 years. Did it not logically follow that he was more than willing to die for him as well?

Deciding that he honestly could not be bothered figuring out what sort of logic the man followed, he leaned heavily against the dome instead. “Imoen!” Her voice and instruments had trailed off a while ago. “Child, what is going on in there?” And for that matter, why had those two used diamond when creating that dome? Unscratchable it may be but diamond was hardly that difficult to shatter. Had they accounted for that? Then again, it wasn’t blunt damage they had to worry about given how the Vestige manifested into the world. Against anything else, diamond was likely to be more useful than most any other option. Gorion squinted at the material and thought of casting some cantrip or spell to analyse the crystalline pattern but then remembered that there were more important concerns. “Imoen, stand back from the walls! We’ll be bringing them d-“

Diamond turned to dust before him and he was suddenly toppling forward in a fall just as uncontrollable as the first.

Only for a moment though. A moment that was nevertheless enough for him to note his son looking up at him with a full head of hair, a hand holding flimsy knife dispersing into motes of light, and eyes that were more blue than black. Dark cobalt blue. Like [his](http://pre02.deviantart.net/b8af/th/pre/i/2016/169/2/8/dwarf_princess5_by_bobkehl-da6pyg6.jpg) [mother’s](http://pre13.deviantart.net/592e/th/pre/i/2016/171/b/1/dwarven_princess_by_bobkehl-da6z3uq.png).

His son flicked his other hand in his direction.

It could have meant anything. Done anything. The past three days had been filled with discussions, plans, preparations and more discussions, not the least of which were contingencies for if the worst should happen. But despite all those, during that moment when Gorion was in full uncontrolled fall he didn’t feel even the slightest bit apprehensive even when being subjected to magic without permission, for the simple reason that the idea that Cyrus might have failed despite everything never even occurred to him.

Cyrus quickly reached out, snatched the Staff of Healing out of Gorion’s slack grip just as the human himself felt his descent dramatically slow – _feather fall?_ – leaving him drifting slowly through a scattering cloud of diamond dust for barely more than two seconds.

Then the old man gently landed in his son’s arms – _déjà vu_ – only to be quickly set on the floor save for his head and upper body which stayed propped up by Cyrus’ arm as the dwarf went to one knee next to him. It was moments like this that Gorion could appreciate just how large his son was. How broad-shouldered and stocky his son was compared to him, 5-foot height notwithstanding. Said dwarf then wasted no time in reaching out to summon Gorion’s severed arm just as the finger of his other hand – the one holding him up – traced a meandering line over his semi-closed injury and opened it entirely once more.

It did not hurt as much as the first time even when he thought about the difference. Of course, that only meant that Gorion had his mind clear enough to wonder what his son was up to-

Cyrus brought the severed arm to hover above the wound just by looking at it – _a focused gaze more intense than almost any he’d ever mustered previously_ – while briefly touching the Staff of Healing. The object continued to stand near-vertically to the side even after being released entirely but that wasn’t important. More relevant was the magical charge that came loose from it – _a white, misty cloud of positive energy that took the form of a round ball in Cyrus’ hand_ – followed by a second. His son palm-spun the pair a few times like he tended to do with spell-shaped stones time and again, then… absorbed one into his palm while a third charge emerged from the staff to replace it. Then a fourth and a fifth…

And that was it, the last one available. Cyrus frowned – _faint displeasure?_ – but did not avert his eyes from the hovering limb. The blood had pooled both from it and Gorion’s wound but did not spill, held suspended by mere will.

But this all was _completely_ unnecessary. Now that his son was fine they could just visit a priest. Or have one of the others casting Wish again, since that seemed to be turning into a theme. Gorion opened his mouth to speak-

Cyrus tucked his head under his chin to shut him up, grabbed the severed limb by the shoulder after tracing the sleeve into dust which he prestidigitated away, drove it back in place – _a sharp pang of pain that made Gorion flinch, shut his eyes and grit his teeth by reflex_ – and released the spell charges he’d pulled in.

Except he didn’t release them. Not really.

White light shone from his hand. And the rest of him actually for a few seconds, but the dwarf brought it under control with a scowl until positive energy flowed from only his palm and fingers. Coursed really, back and forth, down and up in white threads, strands and channels of healing power that went through, in and out of the limb and Gorion himself, tracing, finding, cleaning and connecting all those things that should have already been connected. Had been connected until such a short time ago.

Being uniquely placed to get a close-up look at the process, Gorion got to watch as his severed limb slowly detached and rose to hover above his wound again, leaving a small gap of around half a centimetre. A gap that over the next two or so minutes filled with streaks and cords of white light that steadily found and relinked cut sinews, blood vessels, bone and nerves, breaking off here and there only to relink _just_ _so_ in a better spot. It was like watching someone piece together a superlatively complicated puzzle while having half the pieces and being forced to create the others from memory and guesswork. It also strongly suggested that his arm had not been cut. Rather, a whole section of it had been… unmade where the malicious tendril had struck him. Disintegrated?

He had no more time to wonder about it because the puzzle seemed to finish coming together in a flash and the energy comprising it shifted and twisted, somehow, leaving behind a shoulder fully regenerated and an arm once more perfectly attached to the rest of him.

A momentary spike of pain and the shock of a whole limb’s worth of blood to move left him gasping and sent his heart beating frantically, left arm twitching erratically for several seconds before the previously concentrated positive energy spread in a flash through his whole body, finally allowing him to regain his senses and fight through the sensation of a million ants crawling underneath his skin.

He emerged from the sensory overload to a world gone silent and a son whose one-armed hold on him had widened just enough to allow him the room needed to move his healing hand from his shoulder to his chest. The sensation was warming and cooling in equal parts and drew from Gorion a sigh of relief.

It seemed to act as a sort of signal because Cyrus’ magic faded and the dwarf released a slow, very slow and deep sigh of his own. One in total contrast to how frantic his heartbeat became. Gorion could feel it, almost hear it despite how his ear rested against his son’s shoulder rather than the proper spot to listen to such things. How unusual that the young man would have an emotional response of this sort, and so strong…

The man looked up at his closed-eyed son and could not help himself from comparing it to all the other times in the past when Cyrus would go quiet and deliberately sightless for whatever reason. Usually to give less visual ammunition to his passively murderous mind. That term made as much sense as any other in the mad world they lived in. He couldn’t find any distinction, not really. At least not by sight.

But his heartbeat was still frantic enough to be felt all the way through Cyrus’ fingertips.

Cyrus Anwar.

Outwardly calm with only his closed eyes to hint that he was trying and failing to suppress some sort of emotional outpour.

Gorion barely spoke around the lump in his throat. “Son.” The dwarf snapped his eyes open and looked right at him. “What… wh-what are you f-feeling right now?”

He would have expected some explosive sigh or whatever other never before seen display from him. He’d have even expected his son to tilt his head, perhaps frown ever so slightly and intellectually reason his way towards an answer. He might even have been hoping for the latter, for a reprieve from…

Instead, his son’s heartbeat settled and his face softened into something warm and tender that left Gorion awestruck. His eyes crinkled as he smiled, a small but earnest thing and- “I love you, Father.”

Gorion’s breath stalled and his own heart skipped a beat in his chest. There were several different commotions all around him, within and outside that diamond prison that wasn’t. The man didn’t notice any of them.  “You…” His whole heart seemed to have jumped in his throat. “Y-you can tell?”

That tender thing on Cyrus’ face somehow softened further. “Can I tell,” he echoed. “Not can I finally, or can I truly.” His mouth turned into a sad sort of smile as his frame suddenly felt a lot less like the all-entrapping granite it usually was, tense and taut under the strain of years upon years of unremembered soul-deep pain. “Can I tell…” Cyrus murmured, reaching up to stroke Gorion’s face. “You accepted me fully despite me not being yours. Despite the thing that begot me. Despite the way he begot me. Despite what it led to, what it robbed you of. Despite the reality of what I was ever since. What I was and wasn’t. 20 whole years of feeling all that pain, but you never even once doubted me did you? Your faith in me, your devotion to me, they never faltered even the smallest bit.”

Gorion tried to speak but the sound that came out was no word at all.

What was he even supposed to say? Was there anything? He’d heard and had every argument already. Self-absorbed, selfish, intentionally and unintentionally dangerous, strange, offensive, prone to causing harm regardless of intent, unnatural. Abomination even. Cyrus had been called all of that at one point or another. For a while only Gorion seemed to see the other sides, but eventually others started to see what he did, call him what he did. Quiet, thoughtful, polite, well-meaning, intelligent. Genius. Charming even. Accidentally so even on the best of days but…

Cyrus Anwar was the little dwarf that saw to the most plebeian and mind-numbing chores, then turned around and easily studied anything and everything he could get his hands on with the brightest minds of the land. He was the young man who claimed not to feel anything or understand what people felt when they felt anything, and then did all he could to stoke the fires of the most beautiful and pleasant of those feelings anyway. Others would have hungered or resented, done all they could to steal the happiness of others or, failing that, snuff it out until everyone else was as “bleak/dark/nothing” as them. Not him, though he tended to make things worse than better more often than not so he eventually just stepped back and did what he could for the ones he judged to have what it took to manage it instead, Imoen most of all. He was a son who didn’t care about anything anyone wanted because he didn’t feel much of anything, then did the best he could in anything and everything because he knew he had a father who wanted what was best for him. Even if the man himself never actually came out and outright demanded anything from him. Cyrus was the emotionally-stunted and confused little man who never spoke up unless prompted, then listed a page’s worth of questions and ponderings in a never-ending quest to figure out how other people understood and experienced the world, because he knew he lacked the proper frame of reference to do it himself.

Cyrus Anwar was the young boy self-absorbed enough to never notice when he accidentally framed someone for murder, only to turn around and equally accidentally blackmail his best friend into becoming the most she could be.

 _Of course_ Gorion never doubted he was capable of love for others.

But the man had no idea how to come out and say all that, nor did he expect to be able to string everything together even if he did, so he just shook his head.

It only seemed to further bother his son. “20 whole years but never a life for yourself,” Cyrus said sadly. “You never knew what to do for me or give me so you decided to do and give everything.”

He made it sound like such a sacrifice when it was hardly anything of the sort. Gorion had already lived a full life with plenty of accomplishments, heroics and marriage born of true love when Cyrus was conceived and born. The only thing he might have wished for in the past 20 years was something he was resigned to never having so it did not really matter.

Oh Vala, if only you were here to see and hear your son.

“Martyrs…” Cyrus murmured cheerlessly. “Hopeless the lot of you.”

“Not hopeless,” Gorion struggled to say, barely managing with his shaking voice. “Not now.” His fear, his anguish, that despair that always lurked in the depths of his soul, all of them seemed to just… evaporate as he beheld his son’s face. The face that did _not_ backslide into that stone-carved gaze that saw everything about you but at the same time didn’t care one whit about you because any feelings disappeared as soon as he thought about them, if they were there at all. “Never now.”

“And never before either,” Cyrus said wistfully.

“No,” Gorion said, voice firm for once. “Never.”

“Stubborn old man,” the dwarf said fondly, rubbing his healed shoulder with a hand infinitely gentle. “I’m healthy and whole now, Father.” The lump in his throat returned and his heartbeat seemed to grow twofold. “And I’m staying that way.” Threefold. “So you can stop being a martyr and just go back to being a saint, alright?”

Gorion blinked up at his son, speechless, and for a moment he actually saw himself reflected in those eyes. Saw himself as _his son_ saw him, a bright, warm existence human-shaped in outline yet shining from within with the light of everything.

Then he couldn’t help himself and burst out laughing.

And laughed.

Laughed and laughed until he cried. Cried as he all but disappeared in his son’s enfolding embrace and kept crying, never making the journey back to laughter.

“-.  .-“

Sometime later when he was finally emotionally spent, his son picked him up – that, too, seemed to be turning into a theme – and carried him to bed. The bed that had until that point been sitting on edge several feet in front of the door as a last bit of cover, much like the other three were in different parts of the suite. Cyrus mentally made it flip and fly over to its proper place next to the wall where he carefully set Gorion down and tucked him in. Conscientiously too. The lad fluffed up two pillows for him and added a touch of magic to have them stay soft and puffy long after stuffing them under Gorion’s head. Then, after divesting the man of his pouches, spellbook and magical rods and wands – all neatly placed on the side counter – Cyrus levitated a couple of blankets over and covered him with them, frowning in displeasure at his father electing to leave his arms uncovered but not willing to gainsay him.

It must all have seemed as unusual for the others as for him because Imoen, Khelben and Elminster all stayed quiet and out of the way throughout that whole chain of events. Or so Gorion suspected, but he admitted to himself that he wasn’t paying as much attention to them as he might otherwise. Khelben specifically gave the impression that he was not at all relaxed behind that impassable façade of his but Gorion honestly couldn’t muster the will to feel suspicion or anything else besides blissful happiness at the moment.

“Magnificent…” Cyrus murmured, squeezing his hand. He was looking at him in more than one way, as he often did, but there was more than selfish interest in his gaze now. Much, much more. “You are magnificent.” Gorion’s spirits seemed to swell even further, impossibly, at being called what only Imoen and Khelben had been before. It drew a smile of total contentment from Cyrus as the lad beheld him.

Perhaps he should have expected his son to choose that precise moment to take the situation sideways. “Now the only thing missing is breakfast in bed,” the dwarf said with a thoughtful look at his father. “I’ll have that up soon, but there are a couple of things in need of sorting first I’m afraid.” Which was when he turned and jumped all the way to the door in a single bound.

He landed with his hand on the Friendly Arm proprietor’s shoulder. “Good gnome.”

“GAH!”

Bentley Mirrorshade shrieked, jumped in place from sheer fright, stubbed his shoulder against the handle of the door he was sneaking out of, flinched and misstepped due to the pain, lost balance and fell backwards only to hit his head against the doorframe, sending him toppling sideways back into the room if not for Cyrus who turned him feather-light for just long enough to catch him and retreat into the suite holding him like one would a babe.

 _Literally_ like one would a babe. As a tall dwarf that was also bulky and broad-shouldered besides, Cyrus could actually do that considering how small gnomes ware in contrast.

That’s right. Bentley had barged in at some point during the worst of the racket after having his knocking and calls ignored. To castigate them for the disturbance, breaking the rules of conduct of the Friendly Arm and put a stop to the magic being done inside. He must have hidden and felt like he was intruding at some point between Gorion’s injury and his subsequent healing and emotional breakdown. And everyone also seemed to have ignored or entirely failed to notice the gnome scuttling back and remain in hiding behind the bed up to the point Cyrus telekinetically yanked it away. That must have been when he tried to sneak back out.

The gnome proprietor came back to himself just as Cyrus finished healing his bruised shoulder and froze in the middle of rubbing his head, eyes looking like they were about to pop out.

Then he flushed red to the tips of his ears. It made an interesting contrast to his salt-and-pepper hair and the generous black moustache and mutton chops, Gorion noted sleepily.

Cyrus shifted the gnome to a one-armed hold – it was _exactly_ how his mother used to carry him as an infant – and reached for his head.

“Young man!” Bentley yelped. “What are you doing!?” He cried shrilly.

“Healing your bump.” And he did just that, making the thoroughly embarrassed gnome freeze.

It only took moments and a short flare of white healing energy before it was done. “There,” Cyrus said with a smile. “All better now, you beautiful man.”

“Beautiful!” The gnome squawked, squirming. “P-put me down! Put me down this instant!”

“Alright.” He did.

Bentley backed away from Cyrus in a manner resembling a grasshopper. Of course, since he refused to take his eyes off the dwarf he only stopped his retreat when his rear came against Gorion’s bedside. The gnome glanced behind him, alarmed, then around him looking distinctly trapped even though Khelben and Elminster were on the other side of the spacious room and Imoen leaned against the edge of the gap in the diamond hemisphere even farther away from him.

“I have upset you,” Cyrus noted contritely.

“Upset!?” Bentley balked. “I’ve just been upreared without permission and then been... then been…” He sputtered, looking green. “I am a happily married man!”

Cyrus, bless him, just frowned. “That has no bearing on my words.”

“No bearing?” Bentley flailed helplessly. “No bearing on the fact you-“

A silent image shimmered into view right in front of the gnome. It was shaped like a mirror showing Bentley Mirrorshade in his entirety. A Bentley Mirrorshade that suddenly erupted with the light so bright and colourful that Gorion thought he might as well have been looking at a sun coloured every shade of wholesome feeling.

The old wizard brought up a hand to shield his vision much like Bentley himself did but did not look away, and neither did anyone else.

Cyrus walked to the side of the illusory mirror. “This is what I see when I look upon you.”

The mirror dispersed into silent dust that faded soon after, leaving only the gnome-shaped form that shone like an indoor sun coloured all the colours Gorion had ever found pleasing to look upon, as well as many he had no words for due to never having seen them before.

“This is your soul,” Cyrus told the speechless landlord.

The dwarf then brought his hand to his chest and closed his eyes.

The room was abruptly flooded with a feeling of upliftment as if a spells of hope, courage and heroism had been cast on everyone everywhere, for a moment.

Then the sensation faded as soon as it came leaving only the lingering impressions of contented bliss, lively hope and pure goodness to echo in the silence.

Bentley Mirrorshade stared, wide-eyed, between Cyrus and the reflection that wasn’t a reflection but was somehow more complete than what people normally saw when they looked upon him, himself being no exception. That was the impression Gorion got at least, gazing at the scene from his bed.

“That, too, was your soul,” Cyrus spoke in the stillness as his hand dropped. “A linchpin of stability, unadulterated kindness and unassailable sanity that bestows virtue upon the world through merely existing.” The dwarf switched from looking at his silent image to smiling warmly down at the awestruck gnome. “How could I see you as anything other than beautiful?”

“…Oh.” Bentley said dumbly as the illusion finally faded from sight. “That’s… Oh lad, I’m not… I’m just...” He tried to speak a couple of times but was lost for words. That Cyrus had spent his whole life unwittingly perfecting his earnest manner barely had to contribute to the situation. “Aw shucks…” The gnome ducked his head and dug into the floor with his toe before he realised what he was doing. Then he stopped himself and flushed even harder than the first time, thoroughly embarrassed all over again.

It made Cyrus’ face fall for some reason. “So many years of giving the world your best and none but a handful of people ever thanked you with anything but begrudgingly surrendered coin, did they? You’ve turned a place of murder and death into one of safe repose and merriment, and yet it takes a Bhaalspawn like me to offer any sort of unvarnished praise.”

Bentley, who’d walked closer to where the illusion of his inner light had been, abruptly backed off again.

Gorion’s heart sunk and a flash of bitter anger stabbed at him for an instant, but he’d had much practice suppressing his outer reaction. Ulraunt had made sure of that much.

He supposed Elminster could be excused for facepalming in the background but Gorion wasn’t about to tell his son how to live his life now that he finally had one.

Cyrus’ face didn’t fall any further, but neither did it lift. “There is no need to back away as if from some terrible beast,” he said sadly. “You have nothing to fear from me.”

Khelben Arunsun, who’d remained grimly silent and tense even through the emotional cascade of moments before, suddenly relaxed completely.

What did he know, Gorion wondered? What did he recall that made him finally believe Cyrus was who he was rather than Bhaal trying to pass himself off as him?

Bentley grimaced and rubbed the back of his head as he worriedly looked between Cyrus and the door without being entirely discrete about it.

Cyrus waited, not speaking or moving, and not looking away from Bentley either.

“… Well… what do you expect me to say!?” the gnome finally burst. “I come here because of noise complaints and find you doing magic on each other and and… and destroying my inn!” The gnome started pacing only to abruptly stop and gesture helplessly at the magically created material that dominated most of the suite. Material which had grown long, thorny spikes that went through the floor and ceiling at random points. “My inn…” Bentley said mournfully. “How will I ever fix this!? This was my best suite!”

The stab of anger was clearer this time and Gorion almost showed it. Did the man not appreciate being so earnestly appreciated at all? Did he think they couldn’t tell he was only trying to extract himself from an uncomfortable situation at his son’s expense?

But Cyrus just smiled that wistful smile of his that Gorion already knew he’d never get tired of seeing. “So many years of being only begrudgingly compensated for the good and peace you bestow upon the world. I suppose it only logically follows that you wouldn’t expect others to respect your livelihood the way you do.”

“Wouldn’t expect!” Bentley yelled, whirling on him. “Wouldn’t expect! There is no _expecting_ to be had here!” He gesticulated helplessly at the suite.

Which was when Gorion’s Rod of Absorption flew from his end table across the room, over the head of Bentley Mirrorshade and right into Cyrus’ hand.

“Hold this for me, will you?”

Bentley gaped and reflexively did as he was told.

But Cyrus did not just let go once the rod was in the gnome’s hand. His grip came loose slowly, trailing five different balls of energy that emerged from the magical item one after another. Magic that merged together in a single whole that Cyrus manipulated with quick finger strokes…

Then sent right at the dual diamond screen.

Imoen yelped and jumped away, but for the first time ever Cyrus completely ignored her.

Gorion thought he might start laughing hysterically but refrained.

Barely.

Fissures emptied of conjured carbon, spikes withdrew from floor and walls and the whole diamond setup shimmered and wavered, contorting and shifting together under the direction of the spell of transformation until there was just one, large ball floating in the center of the room. A single ball of diamond just over a meter in diameter.

A ball of diamond that abruptly broke into hundreds, possibly thousands of perfectly cut diamonds at the barest of Cyrus’ hand twists. Diamonds upon diamonds that glimmered in magelight and the dawn beams coming through the windows from outside.

Bentely gasped and stared in shock, finally realising just what those walls had been made of.

And from the corner of his eyes, Gorion saw Elminster looking at his son with his eyebrows having completely disappeared beneath the brim of his hat. It must have been one of the things Khelben never got around to mentioning to him. That his son had more or less learned every “useless” spell there was to learn in his years in Candlekeep.

It was strange that he actually needed to draw on those charges, however. He never needed to before.

The old man was abruptly distracted by the sight of the diamond… swarm… flying right at the dwarf and gnome duo only to pour neatly into a large bag that Cyrus had thoughtfully conjured in the interim. A bag larger than Bentley himself was.

And as if that wasn’t already a statement of intent and opinion all on its own, there was still an unevenly cut diamond sphere floating in the middle of the room. One that was “only” as large as his head, Gorion noted in passing as said chunk of diamond flew to hover in front of his son.

Cyrus drew five more charges from the rod of absorption that had miraculously _not_ fallen out of Bentley Mirrorshade’s slack grip – _prestidigitation to stick it in place?_ – and used them to cast a spell of fabrication.

Over the next five or so minutes Cyrus manipulated the diamond in mid-air, lifting it, lowering it, spinning it and using magically-sharpened fingernails to trace various cuts all over its rapidly changing shape and surface, each invariably cutting chips off the main whole. Chips that crumbled to dust the moment they were far enough away and he stopped focusing on them in favour of what he was sculpting.

Finally, after a period of no one talking or doing anything but stare between the self-absorbed dwarf – _only you, son_ – to the gaping gnome and back, Cyrus finished his magical crafting project and allowed it to settle in his grasp.

Gorion looked at it, trying to figure out its meaning. It was a three-fold gimbal with rings made of interlocked cut diamonds and a vertical, transparent rod holding a translucent spherical diamond in the centre. Squinting, Gorion could make out the faint shape of a dagger inside it.

The last of the diamond dust grains settled on the floor.

“I’m not entirely happy with this,” Cyrus said as if he wasn’t holding something worth at least as much as the ludicrously huge sack of diamonds two feet from him. Sack of diamonds that would fetch a price higher than that of the entire fortress they were standing in. “This would not pass as anything better than an apprentice side project among my people.”

Gorion nearly burst into laughter again. After he finished learning all the “useless” spells and making note of the benefits of knowing transformation, fabrication and their variants, Cyrus decided to switch nearly entirely to learning crafts. So he did just that since soon after Khelben stopped dropping by regularly. And now his son finally gains a healthy emotional range and he decides he isn’t enough of an overachiever already? What did he expect, that he’d be miraculously equal to people who put several decades into their craft? He was 20 not 200.

Whether or not the lad reached the same conclusion, Cyrus seemingly decided what was done was done so he took the rod back – he tossed it over his shoulder to land right in the trash bin, depleted – and dumped the diamond sculpture in the hands of the slackjawed Bentley Mirrorshade. “Here you go.” Because it wasn’t like Khelben and Elminster had created the diamond so it technically wasn’t his to give away. “Of course, I am well aware that a single gesture of goodwill is hardly enough in this situation.”

It wasn’t?

Cyrus magically summoned Gorion’s other Rod of Absorption, pulled out five charges from it and used them to subject the suite to a Greater Spell to Make Whole.

All the gouges, holes and even old wear damage in the floor, walls and ceiling disappeared.

Running his eye over the stonework, Cyrus nodded to himself and turned back at the still mindblown gnome next to him. “I will not insult you by suggesting that you stash this somewhere secure,” he nudged the sack of diamonds with his foot. It shifted dangerously but he stabilised it with his knee as he took out a fistful to place in a different pouch which he half-tossed, half-levitated over to Gorion’s bedside counter. “We’ll have to keep a few of these I’m afraid. And some of the dust.” A quick spell of prestidigitation gathered up all the diamond dust in the room and split it 80-20 between two small bags, the former of which he bent over to tie to the belt of the still unresponsive proprietor.

Straightening up and sending the other bag to land next to the diamond pouch, Cyrus Anwar rubbed his chin, absently used prestidigitation to groom and braid his moustache and beard into its usual style, secured it in place with the clasps Gorion had gathered from the forest with Arawn’s help, then glanced around the room one last time to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, presumably.

Then he looked down with a faintly worried frown at the still motionless gnome whose eyes hadn’t left the diamond sculpture since he’d handed it over.

Cyrus pocketed the Rod of Absorption, took the three-fold diamond gimbal away – Bentley shuddered and blinked rapidly as if rising from a stupor once it was no longer in his direct line of sight – and left it hovering in the air next to them.

Then he smiled and hugged the gnome.

Bentley squeaked and almost entirely disappeared from sight.

But he didn’t fight, squirm or complain, even though he could have. Gorion could easily tell. For all that his son had enfolded him in a total, firm hold, it wasn’t crushingly tight if indeed it was tight at all. It was the sort of hug meant to last minutes instead of seconds, the sort that you did because you wanted, because you truly cared about someone and enjoyed closeness with them. Gorion’s heart melted at seeing his own method so faithfully emulated.

He also moved a bit closer to his second episode of uncontrollable laughter at the comical sight that the two made, a thin, tiny gnome past his middle age being bear hugged by a massive dwarf barely into his adulthood blissfully rubbing his cheek in the man’s hair.

A minute or so later, Cyrus released the dishevelled and near-mortally embarrassed gnome, backed up a couple of steps and hummed thoughtfully. “That felt highly fulfilling.” Then he dropped the diamond sculpture in Bentley’s hands again, turned around, walked over to Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun and spontaneously hugged him as well.

And when he was done with that, he traversed the room to do the same to Imoen – she made a big show of _not_ failing to immediately hug him back and stick her tongue out to Khelben who had, though she thankfully refrained from rubbing Cyrus’ face in her bosom – then came over to take Gorion’s hand and kiss it since he couldn’t or wouldn’t have him rise from the bed to hug him again.

Gorion… supposed they’d already shared a hug longer than all the others combined. And if he did rise and hugged his son again, he strongly feared it wouldn’t be laughter he succumbed to when the time came.

His son seemed to understand – with what his eyes saw, it was probably not just Gorion’s imagination – and smiled. “There, now it’s the full set.” He glanced from Imoen, “my ideal,” to a not-at-all impassive Khelben Arunsun “my method,” then back to him. His face softened in that tender thing from earlier and Gorion thought he might cry again anyway. “My reason.”

And the man knew, without any doubt, that it wasn’t just motive his son was talking about.

Then the dwarf let go of his hand and turned around… “And I suppose Elminster helped significantly as well.” His voice hadn’t sounded so dubious since he was ten. “Thank you for that.”

Stunned silence.

“I feel thy love,” Elminster deadpanned sourly, chewing on his pipe. “’Tis overpowering, truly.”

Gorion couldn’t see his son’s face but he _knew_ the lad must have scowled mutinously. “I suppose I _could_ give you a hug as well.”

“I shall survive without, I am sure,” the sage said flatly.

There was a pause.

Then Cyrus faded into Invisibility.

Elminster did a visible double take. Why had he-?

Only to stumble in place moment later when the dwarf became visible just as he enfolded him in a sudden embrace.

Cyrus detached immediately and hopped away before the sage’s reflexive staff-based Headsmack of Enlightenment connected.

“Aha!” The young dwarf proclaimed, finger pointed at the startled man. “So you _couldn’t_ see me after all!” Despite that the man had True Sight permanently active and Cyrus was wearing no items preventing magical detection.

It finally started to dawn on Gorion that some fundamental things might have changed overnight, besides his son becoming hale and whole.

“Well then!” Cyrus said jovially as he approached the gnome again, who finally managed to tear his eyes away from the sculpture by his own volition. “I will, of course, not pretend that a mere material recompense is enough to offset the night’s events and their consequences.” It wasn’t?

“It isn’t?” Khelben asked for both of them. Seemed the hug had rather ruined his well-practiced aloof mien.

Gorion looked from the glittering diamond sculpture to the huge sack of diamonds and back, disbelief painted clear on his face. Really, son?

But Cyrus was still talking. “Action speaks louder than words or gifts, and I dare say that bringing enough peace to your establishment is the only way our debt will be truly repaid for disturbing the peace in the first place due to the necessities that had to be acted upon last night.” But he’d already cleaned the room, repaired it, rearranged the furniture while he was talking and paid Bentley several thousand times over in both gems _and_ dust for priestly and arcane works. There was literally _nothing_ left for Cyrus to- “Which is why I shall now go dispose of that assassin downstairs.”

That business of “volunteering information” over and done with, Cyrus Anwar walked out the door.

…

“Wait, what!?” Khelben balked.

“Oh this I gotta see!” Imoen proclaimed, running out after him.

“Oh Mystra! Ask a stupid question…” The Archmage of Waterdeep despaired. “Imoen! Child!” Khelben called fruitlessly after her, forehead vein visibly throbbing. “Oh for the love of… Little Prince you come back up here right now!” And he nearly literally ran out the door after them.

Gorion stared at the empty doorway. He’d heard of random acts of behaviour and had even seen them around his son on occasion, but those were usually caused by circumstance rather than done by him, and he never did anything as out of the blue as this.  It was a thoroughly flummoxing sight of a level he hadn’t been witness to in decades. At least not from anyone that counted. Like pregnancy cravings. They came and went and only an emptiness remained, and the rubble that once was men.

Then Bentley Mirrorshade finally seemed to register what Cyrus had said, gasped, nearly dropped the sculpture, caught the sculpture at the cost of knocking the gigantic bag of diamonds over and ran out the door himself, leaving the ludicrous pile of gems to spill out across the floor. “My Inn!”

Gorion stared.

Then he laughed. “Pfffhahahahahaha!” It came in a slow flow from deep within, but before he knew it he was laughing so hard that his pillows shifted and the whole bedframe shook and creaked along with him. “Hahahahahahahaha! Oh I… I… can’t even… I don’t even… ahahahahahahaha!”

He laughed and laughed and laughed even as Elminster dragged a chair and sat down at his bedside to fiddle with some scrying spell or other. Then Gorion laughed some more until he was too tired to go on. Too tired to even stay up, never mind that Cyrus said he’d be brining breakfast once he was done downstairs. Given what he’d gone down to do it would probably be a while anyway, the man drowsily reasoned between deep breaths. More than enough time for a nap. Or maybe a full day’s sleep. He hadn’t had one of those in a while.

He’d stayed up all night casting illegal magic as part of a ritual to kill a god that was already dead, got his arm cut off, headbutted a friend, insulted his other friend, got his arm reattached, laughed until he cried, cried until he couldn’t stand, and then watched his dear, precious son revel in his wholeness for the first time since he’d been born twenty years ago. Oh Vala, if only you were here to see him.  “My little prince,” he murmured as he drifted off. “My own little marvel.”

Bursting into a final, short-lived round of chuckles, the Sage of Candlekeep sunk into his pillows and covers and felt sleep overcome him, but it was fine. Everything was fine. He would take a well-deserved rest while his son went off to find interesting new people and kill them.

Life was perfect.


	14. Overture II: Fear no Fear

23 people sleeping or puttering about in the various rooms of the inn, two of whom were listening at the door or outright staring from doors ajar. A third had left his room – _half-orc, neutral evil with a bloody history to put chaotic evil madmen to shame, self-deluded as pertaining his motivations and character?_ – and was making his way downstairs in the wake of Imoen and Khelben Arunsun. 74 people already in the common room eating, drinking, talking or doing whatever else. Not counting the cooks. Or the waitresses and the… ‘waitresses.’

87 more people walking about or still slumbering in the barns and stables outside, plus two dozen guards patrolling the grounds and walls, both of the fort itself and outer perimeter. In all, the Friendly Arm Inn was actually underpopulated at the moment, seeing as it the walled community could house and feed 450 people at a time easily. The Iron Crisis may have impacted its prosperity somewhat, but even broken nails and wagon wheel axels hadn’t actually brought trade to a halt yet, though the bandit activity seemed to be doing its best to remedy that. Still, 74 people was plenty. More than enough to warn someone off from doing what Cyrus Anwar had decided to do the moment he spoke his first words upon finally getting a life of his own.

 _I love you, father_.

He hoped he wouldn’t be following up with giving him a heart attack.

His footsteps were swift and sure as he descended the main stairway of the fort. It was set along the southern-most load-bearing wall interestingly enough, rather than closer to the centre of the structure. It had a pair on the opposite side of the keep-turned-inn. It worked quite well for the new function the keep had been turned towards. Allowed Bentley Mirrorshade to turn the entire first floor into one, large common room that had nothing to worry about traffic-wise. As their quick processing the previous evening had shown, congestion was most definitely not among the issues that the good gnome had to deal with.

Cyrus’ lips curled into a small smile at the thought of him. Though not quite as unassailably bright as Imoen, his soul was nonetheless a brilliant thing with one thing going for it that none of the people currently traveling with him could rightly claim, though he hoped Gorion would again reach that stage soon himself.

Bentley Mirrorshade was truly, undeniably _sane_.

What Cyrus was about to do probably wasn’t sane at all by conventional wisdom, but he wasn’t about to start his life by immediately slipping down the slopes of deception, self-doubt and recrimination.

He emerged from the staircase and into the common room with no pause in his step. His stride continued unabated even as he nodded to Khalid and Jaheira who were indulging in an early drink at the table nearest the stairs. He then turned to make his way to the far side of the hall towards the wall with the main keep entrance, though this did not prevent him from knowing exactly when Imoen emerged into the common room herself, or that she made sure to keep him in her sights the whole time.

Perfect.

His left hand flexed a few times as if he was stretching it but in truth he was just using hand signals developed between the two of them long ago, when Cyrus still participated in mischief making.

_Target acquired. Moving to confront. Circle round to provide backup. Find incriminating evidence. Eschew all reservations._

Imoen proceeded to approach the bar as if her glance at him had been the passing interest of someone not at affiliated with him at all.

The dwarf strode along the wall and past several different tables before turning left, passing the very conspicuous corner booth – _conspicuous on account of its sole occupant_ – and approached the entrance just as a black robed human entered, one with brown hair and face bearing lines distinctive of those who are used to constantly sneer at everyone and everything.

Cyrus looked past the man and at the soul within. It was an ugly thing, like a mass of rot dotted with pustules and giving off poisonous vapours. There was no light to be had anywhere in it. Only an unseemly imitation, shadows playing across the faint shine of the world, such as it was.

“Hello there!” Cyrus greeted him merrily, reaching out to grab and shake his hand before the man could do anything other than turn with a start in his direction. “I say I am pleased we get to cross paths so soon.”

The human tried to pull his hand free, but when he failed he suddenly went tense, though he tried to hide it. “I’m sorry, do I know you?” His eyes blinked and something like suspicion/surprise/recognition flashed over them.

Cyrus didn’t bother showing he’d noticed the fingers of his left hand flexing. “Definitely not.” He used his own other hand to play with his beard braid. “This is the first time we have exchanged words or even set eyes upon one another.”

The man tried to pull his hand free again but he may as well have been trying to pull free from the grasp of a statue carved through it. “Perhaps an exchange of names is in order then.” His left hand’s fingers discretely moved in the first motions of a Colour Spray. So he could cast some spells silently. At least he wasn’t a total incompetent then. Though considering that Cyrus only had Shank and Carbos to compare him to in matter of incompetence that did not exactly say much.

The dwarf didn’t bother showing he’d noticed that either. “You must know _of_ me, I’m sure.” He gestured behind the wizard though he did not take his eyes off him. “Isn’t that right, my lady?”

The man started and made to turn but his abrupt attempt was just as abruptly thwarted by dwarf’s statue-like grip.

“Hmm,” Imoen backed off and wrinkled her nose as she went through the man’s bag. The side bag which she’d quite deftly separated from the cross-torso belt it hung off. “Aha! Here it is!” She pulled out a scroll and unrolled it, all the while giving every impression she knew what she’d been looking for all along, despite that she most definitely did not. “Let’s see here…”

“What are you doing!?” The human shrieked. “Thief! Thievery, in this supposed neutral place!”

She completely ignored the agitated attempts of the man to pull free of the dwarf that still hadn’t released him. “Let’s see… Bounty Notice!”

The two ‘waitresses’ that had started to make their way over – _really iron golems in illusionary disguise_ – suddenly stopped their advance.

Imoen cleared her throat and spoke clearly in the conspicuously silent hall. “Be it known to all those of evil intent, that a bounty has been placed upon the head of Cyrus Anwar, the step-son of Gorion. Last seen in the area of Candlekeep, this person is to be killed in quick order. Those returning with proof of the deed shall receive no less than 200 coins of gold.” By then Jaheira and Khalid had already risen from their seats, while Khelben Arunsun had not only reached the common room himself but had walked in Cyrus wake all the way to the conspicuous corner booth. “As always, any that reveal these plans to the forces of law shall join the target in their fate.”

The mage hissed, turned back on Cyrus and gave up all attempts at diplomacy, suddenly raising his free arm to –

Cyrus crushed the bones in his hand.

“Aaaaargh!” The man suddenly fell to his knees with a howl of pain, Colour Spray fizzling harmlessly and forgotten. “Aaaaaugh! Ghhrk-gah!”

 “I am a gentle man at heart,” the dwarf spoke in the ensuing silence broken only by an evil man’s gasps of agony. Even Bentley Mirrorshade’s steps as he crossed the hall were entirely soundless. “But I must say that the idea of you bringing dissent into this peaceful place is one I find… _displeasing_.” He squeezed the man’s hand harder, making his whole body jerk through a wail and interrupting his intent to punch him for all the good it would have done. “The good gnome Bentley Mirroshade did not turn a place of evil and death into one of repose and merriment just for pretentious individuals like yourself to bring strife in it.” He gestured with his head in the direction of Dorn Il-Khan. “That half-orc over there may have slaughtered more than one village down to the last babe,” all patrons of the Friendly Arm Inn suddenly gasped, leaned back, ducked away or otherwise expressed their horror at his revelation, “but at least he did not come in here seeking to inflict any unrest.” He ignored the inner flare of appreciation in said half-orc’s soul at witnessing his action, despite that the outrage and anger at being so suddenly outed to everyone ignited in the demon worshiper to a far greater extent. His approval only filled Cyrus with shame. Fortunately, he would not have to bear it long. “Unlike yourself.”

The evil mage – _Tarnesh_ – reached into a pocket and pulled out a dagger which he made to aim at the dwarf’s face but Cyrus just squeezed his already injured hand with crushing force, making him drop the knife from the latest body-wracking flare of agony. “Aaaayyee! Augh-gh!”

There was clear terror shining from the man’s rotten soul now, amidst all the pain. Not quite the same yellow as his father’s, _his_ fear had always been justified and righteous, but it was light all the same.

Cyrus was determined to make more light shine from the man in the short time left to him. “Now, I happen to like this place as it is,” Cyrus said as Imoen gracefully slipped past them to lean against the frame of the large double entrance, incidentally sending Tarnesh’s dagger sliding away with the barest hit of her toe. “And I greatly respect and admire the good proprietor.”

Bentley Mirrorshade abruptly shut his mouth instead of acting on his clear intent to demand that they take this elsewhere. His indignation suddenly wasn’t quite strong enough to mask his tentative curiosity as to where this was going, or the fact that he was still moved emotionally from earlier, no matter than he was thoroughly embarrassed because of everything that had occurred upstairs.

“So you see,” the dwarf continued in the silent stillness of the inn’s main chamber. “I simply _must_ insist we take this outside.”

Ternesh glared at up at him – _hate not nearly enough to mask the terror and pain, neither the inside nor out_ – and grit his teeth. “I’ll k-kill you y-yet!”

Bravado of course. Though Cyrus supposed the pain might have left him feebleminded and oblivious to the two harpers that had made their way over, or the identity of a certain Archmage that seemed torn between amusement and exasperation in the background. Pain tended to leave people dazed and oblivious to everything beyond their immediate surrounding after all.

“Perhaps,” anything was possible. “I still _must_ insist that any attempts to achieve such be taken outside though. I hope you understand.”

Tarnesh glared, despite the pallor of his face and the sweat pouring off his brow.

Cyrus allowed any semblance of amusement to leave his expression and steadily increased the strength of his grip.

“Aaaah!” He broke almost immediately. “Alright, alright!” he shrieked.

Cyrus smiled in satisfaction and healed his hand – _a clear flare of white_ – but did not release him. No sense in rendering him incapable of casting his spells. Part of the goal behind this whole charade was to test himself against magic in a controlled environment after all.

Now for the second half of the goal. “Still, before we get on with things I believe we should nonetheless ensure this is not just some great misunderstanding. So! Introductions!” He ignored the way Khelben’s self-light shifted in place. It was not the first time he made the Archmage palm his face, nor would it be the last. “You are known as Tarnesh, of course. Son of Hanesh, whom you stabbed to death with a kitchen knife when you were twelve, along with your mother and twin sister whose bodies you then sold to a necromancer in exchange for being taken on as an apprentice.” He did not share in the various reactions of the onlookers or the wide-eyed shock on the man himself. He wasn’t one to talk, seeing as he almost killed his father and teacher too, when he was around that age. And with a chest of all things. “I, as you know, am Cyrus Anwar.” He gave a small bow though he did not break eye contact. His posture settled back into one just as outwardly relaxed as before, even if his eyes probably betrayed how very _not_ amused he was by the whole situation. Not that it mattered. Nothing would matter much in short order. “And yes, as your note stated, I am the son of the sage Gorion of Candlekeep. Though as your note did _not_ specify, I am also the offspring of that rather unpleasant specimen who sowed his oats during the year 1348 and the decades leading up to it.” Khelben’s soul suddenly flared with panic but he finished before his teacher managed to say anything. “You probably know him better as Bhaal.”

The first immediate result of that statement was an instant of silence.

The _second_ immediate result was the mass of Friendly Arm patrons reacting to him in an even more intense and varied range of horror/fear/everything than they had when he tossed out that bit about Dorn. That was okay. He wasn't about to be afraid of their fear or begrudge it, especially when it was justified.

The third result was by far the strangest and managed to derail the others two entirely.

“Oooooh!” Khelben Arunsun swayed on his feet and collapsed in the booth occupied by the lone dwarf in the hall with an astonishing amount of dramatic flair that was not faked in the least. The Archmage then slouched against the back rest as if he’d suddenly lost all strength. “I can’t take it. You’ve killed me. My heart’s given out from the stress.”

Cyrus blinked. Perhaps it wasn’t his father’s heart he should be worrying about?

He turned his head to look at him, peering through clothes and flesh to the heart within. “No it hasn’t.” He blinked again to refocus his sight on the physical world. “And if it had I’d probably be able to heal it anyway now.”

The man only groaned again and sunk his face in both hands, elbows propped on the tabletop. “And it did not occur to you that perhaps it would be better to _not_ risk giving me a heart attack by proclaiming your status as Bhaalspawn to all and sundry?”

“As opposed to only ‘those of evil intent’ knowing?” He asked dryly, completely unbothered by the thoroughly upended mood in the common room of the inn he was standing in.

“Oh, Mystra!” Khelben dropped his hands on the tabletop and hung his head in despair. “Ask a stupid question.” He looked up and somehow didn’t glare at Cyrus this time. He was – _Cyrus looked without looking to the soul within_ – still affected by the hug of earlier? How pleasantly surprising. “But you don’t ascribe to even that notion, do you?”

“What’s the point in hiding it anyway?” Horrified fascination from all corners. “Everyone with a stake in matters, good or evil, already knows. The best that the alternative can allow is for me to hide my lineage for a while and manage to establish some sort of reputation only for everything to come crashing down in a year or two when someone inevitably finds out through whatever means and discredits not only me but everyone associated with myself as well.” He shrugged. “Possibly one of the others of Bhaal’s blood seeing as we’re due the fulfilment of Alaundo’s prophecy at this point anyway.” He squeezed Tarnesh’s hand to warn him against any sudden moves on pain of having his bones crushed a second time. The man had been trying to sketch another spell with his non-dominant hand, the nerve. “This way I can get it all out of the way from the start and not have to worry about it.”

The Archmage sighed and looked longingly at the mug of ale to the side.

The lone dwarf in the inn looked admirably unperturbed by the whole thing and gamely pushed the nearly-full drink for the man to take.

Cyrus decided to finally give him a proper look, though it only confirmed what he’d already known.

4 foot six, long white hair, long white beard arranged in braids held in place with clasps shaped like little bronze hammers, no lines of death on him at all, like Tethtoril, though he had an anvil and hammer instead. Hammer and anvil interposed over a dwarf-shaped haze that looked like glass coloured all shades of fire.

A Sonnlinor then. A high priest of Moradin. One who’d _not_ been at the inn the evening before. Lacking lines of death was _distinctive_ in a way that Cyrus would have noticed regardless of how inwardly focused he was.

What a coincidence.

Khelben Arunsun flashed the dwarf a grateful smile and proceeded to empty the ale mug in one go, which was quite impressive.

“Well,” Cyrus said flatly, looking away from his teacher to the still-kneeling mage whose hand he still hadn’t let go of. “I suppose we may as well get this over with before I drive someone else to drink today.” Bentley snorted where he stood between his two 'waitresses' and immediately pretended he hadn’t. “Then I can try to live my life until the next assassin your Bhaalspawn employer sends after me.” Tarnesh wasn’t the only one taken aback by his statement but Cyrus would be lying if he did not find it ironic. “Oh. You didn’t know? How unfortunate. For _you_.”

Cyrus healed the man’s hand again before finally releasing him.

Tarnesh fell on his backside, then scrambled to stand and put as much distance between himself and the dwarf as possible, face pale and gaunt compared to when he’d come in.

So, naturally, Imoen chose that precise moment to toss the man his pouch back.

Tarnesh fumbled the catch and had to scramble to pick it up from the floor.

Cyrus waited for the terrified assassin to get his bearing and try and fail to glare at him. Then he gestured at the door, not at all perturbed by the fact that the people watching would disperse throughout the Sword Coast and spread the news of what he’d just revealed everywhere in a matter of days. “After you. _I insist_.”


	15. Panic Is a Free Action

“Cupio, Virtus, Licet!”  
  
Sleep, Horror, Shadow Spray. Area of effect spells. All of them passed through the space he occupied as if he wasn’t even there.  
  
“Manus, Potentis, Paro!”  
  
Dispel Magic washed over him uselessly, though some residual magic did puff out of his clothes, being that they had been conjured a few days before. They were a permanent creation but residual arcane energy had lingered.  
  
Tarnesh seemed to rally at the apparent effectiveness of his spell. Cyrus wondered if it would do anything besides spurring him on. Like make him pause and consider his actions instead of rashly wasting his spells. If he were in his right mind he would have tried Dispel Magic after his first spell failed. Perhaps the reason-breaking pain and terror of earlier had finally loosened their hold?  
  
“Vita, Mortis, Careo!”  
  
Apparently not.  
  
Cause Fear sputtered and fizzled around the necromancer’s hand, leaving Tarnesh gaping. So did Larloch’s Minor Drain. Cyrus looked at him thoughtfully as he spun the copper coin across his knuckles with his left hand. It was all he’d been doing since they’d stopped just off the road leading in and out of the Friendly Arm. He should probably have used a different wording when he told the wizard he’d let him successfully land one spell on him before he retaliated, as compensation for crushing his hand earlier. Khelben Arunsun had shaken his head in exasperation from where he’d taken a spot near the drawbridge, to “referee” the fight.  
  
Tarnesh still hadn’t realized who he was, which was likely why he hadn’t attempted to flee yet.  
  
It was for the best of course. And part of why Cyrus had taken a spot south of the keep: to keep Tarnesh between him and the Inn and with his back to it, and Khelben incidentally.  
  
Among other things.  
  
But at this rate it didn’t seem the man would manage a successful hit at all. Not that he was all that hung up on lawful fairness but Cyrus _did_ mean to test the reach magic had on him in controlled circumstances. Or didn’t have, as it seemed to be increasingly clear.  
  
“Incertus, Pulcher, Imperio.”  
  
Magic Missile rushed out of the man’s fingertips – only three, interestingly – and veered wildly off course, never actually converging on him. It confirmed what the prior spell failure indicated: he couldn’t be targeted by spells.  
  
As far as the Weave was concerned, he didn’t exist.  
  
Visibly panicking, Tarnesh repeated the incantation and tried a gust of wind this time. The man had a fairly wide selection of spells, for a necromancer. Then again, there were no graves or discarded bodies nearby for him to use Animate Dead on. The wind rushed at the dwarf and sent his clothes rustling but didn’t exert any pressure on him directly at all.  
  
He would have to figure out how to include his clothes and eventually armour into his perception of “self” at some point. It wouldn’t do for someone with more wits than this man to figure out that he may as well target his equipment if he couldn’t target him directly. Cyrus could already imagine what would happen if a Shatter spell or Rockburst was used against him that way.  
  
“F-Facio, Voco, Ferre!”  
  
Grease. Cast at his feet. Finally a better idea, now to see what follow-up the man would try.  
  
“Incertus, Pulcher, Imperio!”  
  
The fireball – cast from a scroll, not memory – exploded right at his feet, setting the grease on fire.  
  
Cyrus studied his immediate surroundings and nodded, though he did not stop coin-spinning that single copper while he savoured the irony of the situation. Had the grease been _real_ , this might actually have had an effect. Alas, it was as magical as the fireballs’ fire was, which meant that it didn’t affect him any more than the other spells before it.  
  
Correction, his clothes started to darken and catch fire, which _was_ a real problem.  
  
He invested a touch of his inner power, barely more than he would use for a cantrip really, into suppressing the charring and endowing his clothes with a mending effect.  
  
And that took care of that.  
  
“You… y-you!” Tarnesh croaked from where he stood twenty-five feet in front of him, wide-eyed at the sight of him standing in the flames at no harm to himself. “Wh… w-what _are_ you! M-monster!” He took half a step back in bone-chilling fear. Cyrus could see it in him, the glow of stark-yellow terror that took the place of the poison-like vapours that emanated from him at any other time.  
  
There was a fair bit of fear in the many onlookers who’d shamelessly followed them out to watch from across the drawbridge too. Only Khelben, and Imoen who stood next to him, were unaffected, though the former was beginning to look distinctly contemplative.  
  
But Tarnesh had asked him a question, so he told the truth, as always. “I’m complicated.”  
  
Tarnesh snarled – _bravado not at all reflected in his inner terror or the cold sweat on his brow_ – and cast Darkness.  
  
Hmm, so this _did_ stymie his darkvision. Interesting, though it made sense: it was evocation, not enchantment, so it wasn’t his mind or anything else of him it was trying to influence. Cyrus focused on his second sight and the Weave patterns faded into view, like gossamer tapestries imposing their own effects on the world.  
  
“Vita, Mortis, Careo!”  
  
Ghoul Touch, was it? The man was desperate. Literally, Cyrus could see it. Nothing he’d so far encountered had managed to impede his soul sight in the least, not even blindness, and this Darkness fell well short of that. Admittedly, the Darkness should have prevented him from comprehending what spell was being cast, but he always knew when and how someone wanted to kill him.  
  
Or disturb his _peace_ now, apparently.  
  
The dwarf ignored the wizard’s failed attempts at stealth and thought about shaping his inner power into a long, needle-thin blade and just cut the magic around him, snuffing both Grease and Fireball spells out.  
  
But then he realised Dispel Magic would work better without nearly the same hassle, and efficiency _was_ one of the things his father impressed upon him. It was also the cornerstone of Gorion’s ability to improve on basically every metamagic feat out there, though he hadn’t quite figured out how to improve Spell Quickening yet. He’d had Cyrus to worry about for the past 20 years, unfortunately, so his own studies had slowed considerably. Not that it stopped his techniques from being lauded as a totally new wizardry path by Amanther and everyone else who more or less lived in the Tower of Exaltation.  
  
Cyrus ultimately decided to let the grease fire burn itself out and even waited for Tarnesh to come within reaching distance, at which point he reached out and clasped hands with him just as the wizard tried to use Ghoul Touch on his chest.  
  
Then he crushed the bones in his hand.  
  
“Aaaaargh!” The man suddenly fell to his knees with a howl of pain, Ghoul Touch firing on contact but doing precisely nothing the moment it clashed with his divine power, little though it was. “Aaaaaugh! Ghhrk-gah!”  
  
An exact repetition of their first meeting.  
  
Except for the fact that Cyrus did not heal his hand before letting go this time.  
  
Tarnesh fell on his side and crawled away, gasping and moaning in pain. He dragged himself backwards in terror and stumbled to his feet, only to immediately turn away to flee.  
  
He smashed chest-first into Arawn’s snout and fell back on the ground. The wolf had walked over to sit quietly just behind the spot Tarnesh had been casting from throughout that whole mockery of a fight. The wolf looked down at the fallen mage distinctly unimpressed both within and without. His tail moved from one side to the other across the grass behind him.  
  
Tarnesh screamed in a fair amount of pain and an even greater amount of fear, crawled away, staggered to stand, turned to the east and ran away.  
  
Cyrus flipped the copper coin he’d been playing with.  
  
The mage stumbled on a rock and fell to his knees, barely avoiding using his crushed hand to steady himself. He turned around and lashed out blindly with a Magic Missile, quite likely the last spell he had memorised. By sheer luck one of the force projectiles actually caught Cyrus in the chest, but it didn’t do much more than any of the other spells before it.  
  
The coin reached the apex of its spinning ascent and started its fall.  
  
Tarnesh obviously hadn’t expected his spell to do much, though he _had_ expected to be chased. He didn’t bother watching to see if it had worked at all, just running away again. Towards the small thicket that bordered the Inn on the south-east side.  
  
Unfortunately for him, that was when the copper coin’s fall brought it back to the same height as Cyrus’ left arm just as said arm swung inwards, perfectly positioned for him to strike the coin with a thumbflip, right on the edge.  
  
_Empower Momentum._  
  
The coin exploded forward. Literally, almost. It blew a gust of wind in its wake as it shot through the air, ripped through Tarnesh’s spine at the base of his neck and came out the other side, then kept going until it smashed through the trunk of the tree several meters away and came out the other side of _that_ , only stopping once it met the boulder behind it.  
  
Tarnesh crashed face-first, unmoving and voiceless.  
  
Cyrus couldn’t see it through the tree but the noise had been distinctive. He wouldn’t be surprised if he found a crack stretching over its surface once he went over to see what had become of his little coin.  
  
An interestingly uniform blanket of _surprise/awe/scary-as-hells-mark-my-words_ washed over the spectators. And there were quite a few of them clustered near the gate and scattered along the walls. Guards and patrons both. Imoen was more or less the same feigned _oh-well/obviously/finally-he’s-done-so-we-can-get-back-down-to-important-business_ that she usually was when Cyrus ended up involved in things that took away from their own together-time, as she called it. And Khelben… well, he seemed quite _suspicious_ and more than ready to start on that conversation about “volunteering information” he’d mentioned a few days prior.  
  
Goodbye sweet anonymity. You were nice while you lasted.  
  
Cyrus turned away from them and made his way to where Tarnesh – _paralysed below neck, in shock, still alive and conscious –_ had fallen. He considered putting him out of his misery, but this slow death by bleeding out hardly compared with the fates he’d inflicted on his victims, his family among them. And it wasn’t like he was in pain. Perhaps the terror he experienced now would help break his evil mindset at least _slightly_ before he finally expired.  
  
He bent over to take his bag instead, leaving his spell component pouch for later.  
  
Scrolls of Mage Armor, Magic Missile and Burning Hands, two vials of healing, standard traveling supplies (firestarter kit, first aid kit, sewing kit, etc.) and a Spellbook, The man had forgotten to reclaim his quarterstaff after surrendering it at the door as per the rules of hospitality. Looking through the Spellbook revealed that the man only had Glitterdust, Mirror Image and Mage Armor available besides what he’d used in the “fight.” Oh well. Cyrus already had two, possibly three, better sources of magical knowledge available.  
  
And it wasn’t like he hadn’t come up with his own spells, if that was what they were. Empower Momentum was his invention, admittedly not a particularly original one and he didn’t get much benefit from using it on throwing stones anymore. Only coins and similar-size objects were small and light enough to need it, and he wouldn’t have had confidence in his ability to achieve 100% accuracy with them before Elminster’s wishing spree. Not without a lot more practice than he’d afforded them.  
  
Arawn padded to him and sniffed at Tarnesh a few times, then looked up at him.  
  
“No you can’t eat him,” Cyrus told him.  
  
Arawn whined inquiringly  
  
“Because you don’t know where he’s been,”  
  
His wolf paced around the not-quite-dead wizard a couple of times, then whined again after smelling him more thoroughly.  
  
“No I’m not going to tell you where he’s been,” he insisted. Honestly, on some level he himself didn’t want to know where he’d been but unfortunately did. “And didn’t the kennel master already feed you?”  
  
The wolf gave a snort of dismissal.  
  
“Don’t give me that,” he shot back, returning the Spellbook to the soon-to-be-no-more assassin’s pack. “We both know you don’t need to eat nearly as much as you pretend to.”  
  
Arawn yelped/growled, affronted.  
  
“No, you’re _not_ a growing pup anymore, so stop asking.” Honestly, even Imoen wasn’t so insistent.  
  
Arawn whined mournfully, looking down at the man longingly.  
  
Cyrus almost reconsidered. Having emotions certainly gave him perspective and context for all the times he _hadn’t_ considered reconsidering out of sympathy. And it wasn’t like Rhialto the Fabulous had been any healthier as far as meals went…  
  
“… I’m still not saying yes,” he managed to say, then turned around and made his way to a certain tree, ignoring both the wolf’s disappointment and the fading sickness that was the wizard’ soul as he died, terrified of death yet oddly undecided whether he was glad or not that the wolf wouldn’t speed up the process.  
  
Cyrus knelt at the base of the tree to dig under the roots for a certain magical matrix he’d glimpsed with his second sight since before the “duel” even began.  
  
It took very little effort to dig it out, and Cyrus couldn’t help but be surprised at his find.  
  
A ring of Wizardry. Specifically, Evermemory. What a surprising find. He couldn’t cast Analyse Dweomer anymore but for this he didn’t need it. He knew what the ring did.  
  
After a mere moment’s consideration, he slipped it on his finger.  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
Which was not surprising. After all, as far as the Weave was concerned he did not exist.  
  
Fortunately, he didn’t actually cast magic the same way other people did, so divinely-imposed memorisation limits didn’t apply to him now. Not that what he did even qualified as “spellcasting” at this point, if it ever did. He strongly suspected what he really did – pouring out his spirit and using it as a tool to shape the Weave as he wanted – was more along the lines of psionics, if anything. Which wasn’t surprising either.  
  
Divinity worked along lines similar to psionics too.  
  
Or perhaps psionics were a watered-down version of divine will made manifest. Or some sort of alternate version of it, given that psionic abilities were strongest among the aberrations of the Far Realm.  
  
He’d have to meet a psionicist to be sure of how their abilities interacted with him but he doubted a ki wave would fail against him the same way Weave-propagated effects like Magic Missile did. Psionic abilities worked in Dead Magic zones just fine.  
  
Though not in Anti-Magic fields, oddly enough. Perhaps the spell was a misnomer? Rather than denying effects it _imposed_ the effects of the laws of physics as they worked in the Prime or wherever else? He’d need to study a scroll and a field in progress at some point. On that note, other energies like positive and negative should have effect as well, whether or not magic was used to pull them from their respective planes. So certain spells should still work on him, arcane and clerical alike.  
  
Somewhat.  
  
“Watcha’ got there?” Imoen piped up from over his shoulder.  
  
Cyrus turned around and gave her a thorough once-over, not immediately acknowledging Khelben Arunsun as he, too, came to a stop a few feet away. He was more interested in the weave pattern that Imoen’s Ring of Protection created through and around her.  
  
Cyrus reached up to rub his bearded chin.  
  
Opportunity!  
  
He would just ask her to take the ring off and put it back on a dozen or so times until he memorised precisely the Weave pattern and told it apart from the actual effects it caused and-  
  
“I dare say this would be a good time for us to have that chat about volunteering information, Little Prince.”  
  
Okay then.  
  
“-. .-“  
  
People made for very interesting and unique spectacles when waking up from sleep. At least to Cyrus’ second sight. The soul slowly went from a tranquil shine comparable to a candlelight – barring vivid dreams and nightmares – to a steadily brighter glow until it finally evened out into their regular rays, shades and patterns the moment they became self-aware.  
  
Unless they broke and devolved into ugly and unhealthy shades, blackening the faint glow of reality. But Cyrus seldom bothered watching evil souls. He had enough bleak/dark/nothing inside his own shell.  
  
Or he used to.  
  
This time around, Gorion’s light – a faint mix of dim colours no different from his normal sleeping state in the past 10 years – brightened steadily until he realized he was awake, then flared fitfully like a sun coloured several dozen different _wrong_ off-colours as he remembered the events of the past few days and failed to give way to happiness due to his hope warring with disbelief. The _remembrance/prayer/did-it-really?_ gave way to yellow/flaring/chaos and slow, sleepy blinks snapped into wide-eyed startlement. The man looked around for a few frantic moments, only staggering internally and freezing both outside and inside when his open eyes settled on Cyrus’ face at his bedside.  
  
His self-light seemed to _stop_ for an instant, like the frozen image of a star half-born and timeless but fragile as sheet-thin glass.  
  
Then every off-colour died or was blown away along with the yellow fear by iridescent happiness that shone with the light of everything.  
  
Imoen had _nothing_ on this.  
  
“Hello Father.” Cyrus caught Gorion’s reaching hand and relaxed as the warmth and light of his Father's soul washed over him and settled like a blanket over and throughout every inch of that room.  
  
Rays and soul winds flashed and rushed here and there as the old man’s memories of the morning settled in his mind. Gorion exhaled deeply and relaxed in his bed but he didn’t look away from his son for even half a moment, grip tight on his.  
  
If everyone could see what Cyrus saw, feel what he felt, he didn’t think anyone would raise a hand in anger again.  
  
But there were more immediate things to worry about. “I never got to bring you breakfast.”  
  
Gorion smiled at him, earnest and loving. “I don’t care.”  
  
And wasn’t _that_ just loaded with subtext.  
  
“You should,” the dwarf said sadly.  
  
“It would have little bearing on how I feel right now.” The light of his soul painted a beautiful picture of that thing known as ecstatic peace. That thing known as happiness. “I… I’m so happy for you.”  
  
Cyrus’ heart sank despite how his Father’s soared higher. “All for me. Never a thought to yourself.”  
  
“What does it matter?” Gorion asked warmly. “It is my happiness all the same.”  
  
“It matters to me.” Something that wouldn’t have been true before yesterday. Not really.  
  
Gorion’s emotional intensity only brightened further until it felt like the sheltering heat of a hearth in winter, only with light much more intense and clear.  
  
Neither said anything else for a while. Gorion didn’t even acknowledge Khelben or Elminster who were going over the results of the notes of the scans they’d performed of Cyrus during the hours following the ill-fated assassination attempt. Nor did he notice Khalid and Jaheira who were sitting on the bed closest to the door and speaking quietly, only occasionally looking in their direction. They’d actually been there to watch the “duel” of the morning and intervene if it seemed to be going badly for him, something which Jaheira had expected more than her husband, but in the end their concerns had proven unfounded.  
  
Not that they’d been unreasonable. For anyone else it _would_ have been the height of stupidity to give a mage a free shot, let alone the rough dozen Cyrus had allowed. And their concern had been honest even if it was more on behalf of Gorion than for Cyrus himself. He knew it was probably against common logic but that actually endeared them to him more than anything. Gorion needed someone who cared about him first and foremost now that he lacked Tethtoril’s balancing presence.  
  
At least until they got around to solving the Iron crisis and associated problems, which wouldn’t be long now.  
  
“Hello, old friend,” Khelben said lowly, stepping up to stand next to where Cyrus sat on his backless chair. “How are you feeling?”  
  
“… Rested.” Gorion looked from Cyrus to Khelben but did not let go of the former’s hand. “Joyful. Elated. Jubilant.” He looked at his son again. “Blessed.”  
  
“Just because your son can finally give you the least of what a parent is due,” Cyrus murmured. “If that.”  
  
“Not even close to the least,” his father only smiled again. “And regardless, that has nothing to do with it.”  
  
“Because you’re happy for me, not for yourself,” the dwarf said, displeased. “Stubborn old man.”  
  
Gorion didn’t say more to that, but Cyrus knew what he was thinking. It was that same stubbornness that got him through the past 2 decades.  
  
Who was Cyrus to begrudge him that? Especially since it was the only reason he made it past his fifth year of life? “At any rate, dinner will be ready soon.”  
  
Gorion blinked and sat up against the headboard. “Dinner? Already? Have I slept so long then?”  
  
“It was doing you good,” Khelben said. “And we were hardly without matters to see too in the interim.” He looked between Cyrus and him. “Chiefly to ascertain precisely what occurred last night, and determine what marks those events left on your son here.” His tone turned dry. “Apparently, there were quite a few. Or just the one mark with many implications, depending on your view.”  
  
Gorion’s grip on his fingers tightened but Cyrus responded in a similar fashion before breaking the grip and standing, freeing the seat for his teacher to take. “I’ll leave you with them then.” He looked to where Bentley Mirroshade’s soul scurried between his bar and the kitchen several floors down, glow somewhat flickering under some sort of strain. “I think I had better go make sure Imoen is not subjecting our host and his staff to any undue stress.” He gave his father a final once over to confirm he’d done all he could to make him comfortable, but everything was in order. He’d even used a couple of cantrips to groom him before the man even woke up so his hair and beard looked as well as they ever did too. “She suddenly decided it was a travesty that I missed my birthday so she took it upon herself to invent some new foodstuff or other in time for dinner, which will be in an hour or so, at most.” He reached for the end table and passed his father a cup of the steaming tea he’d brought up for him. “I had better go make sure she does not try to make too much of a spectacle out of things. With our track record she may well forget we are not in Candlekeep anymore.”  
  
“Because the keep was so very permissive of loud, extended affairs,” Gorion said wryly. “However will the Friendly Arm Inn survive?”  
  
“How indeed.”  
  
The dwarf left his father in the company of the four Harpers, even though two of them didn’t say it but felt it was better for everyone if Cyrus wasn’t allowed anywhere unsupervised. They did not think much of his lack of discretion during the events of the morning, apparently. Jaheira had even outright said it once they’d all retired to their quarters and put a sound isolating barrier around Gorion’s bed so as not to disturb him.  
  
Of course, they were all quite effectively distracted by the scans the two Archmages made of him and the conclusions they subsequently drew after Cyrus recounted the events of the night prior. He told them everything in detail except for his deep delving and what he saw of magic and godly domains. What he did in regards to them.  
  
The final verdict of the magical study of his mind, soul and body seemed to be that he had effectively claimed the divine essence for his own and immediately used up most of it. Invested it into a permanent Mind Blank to be specific. Cyrus himself knew it was more complicated and went deeper than that, but that was what the magic of the greatest and mightiest of Faerun’s arcane spellcasters said. And Khelben’s own scans confirmed it. Elminster had even tried to scry him during the morning events but failed, so he’d resorted to area-targeted clairvoyance spells in order to view and hear the confrontation and later fight without leaving the room. That all fit with the nature of Mind Blank as well.  
  
The strangest thing, though Cyrus didn’t say it, was that the scans saw him at all, let alone provided detailed answers. He watched and felt them with his second sight and they passed through him like he wasn’t even there, just like every one of Tarnesh’s enchantment spells had, but somehow they got results. As far as Elminster Aumar and Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun could tell, he was under a permanent Mind Blank effect but otherwise didn’t differ from any other dwarf in the least, wish-enabled preternatural attributes notwithstanding. And disregarding his ability to **_still_** magic into ineffectuality, which Khelben assumed he’d utilized during the duel.  
  
Cyrus didn’t correct him.  
  
Just like he didn’t inform them that everything they got out of using their spells and mage sight on him made absolutely no sense at all.  
  
He would be telling his father everything but not Elminster or Khelben. As much as he trusted the latter with his wellbeing, he could not say the same of Mystra. Especially after what he’d read off the two Chosen during his short… _episode_. He wouldn’t be putting their loyalty to Mystra in conflict with their loyalty to him and, more relevantly, their old adventuring friend. Khelben in particular would take it rather badly.  
  
The dwarf had to refrain from scowling at the knowledge of just what Mystra had made him do against his wishes. The newest Mystra even.  
  
No respect for her elders at all, that one.  
  
When he emerged into the common room he found the place packed full of people, save for that corner booth they had made sure to reserve in advance. Imoen had been rather imperious when she commanded him to go “procure adequate accommodations for the introduction of the newest and best delicacy in the realms.” It was the same corner booth that the dwarven priest had occupied in the morning. The cleric had been among the very few who didn’t come out to watch the fight, though he did leave the Inn soon after, nodding at Cyrus from afar in passing as he did to everyone else who looked at him.  
  
Cyrus hadn’t even gotten his name.  
  
He was quite disappointed by that honestly. The priest looked like a gold dwarf and his age, bearing and garb hinted that he might actually have come from the Great Rift, possibly from Eartheart itself. Cyrus would have had many things to ask him.  
  
As soon as the nearest table caught sight of him, people proceeded to stare right at him or look away from him with varying levels of curiosity and equally varied levels of fear, but not even a shred of discretion. Then again, perhaps his standards were rather skewed in regards to that. And he wasn’t one to talk about discretion anyway, objectively speaking.  
  
He made his way across the common room to the kitchen double doors just as Bentley Mirrorshade came out, beating flour out of his hair and looking distinctly harassed. “You!” He yelled, pointing a finger.  
  
“Hello, good gnome,” Cyrus smiled down at him. “How can I help?”  
  
Bentley faltered and dropped his hand with a groan. “Blast you, you…” his whole frame slumped with a sigh. “How’s a gnome supposed to vent his rightful anger over a guest taking over half my kitchens when you go and make a face like that?”  
  
Cyrus opened his mouth, closed it, lifted Bentley by the shoulders – “Young man!” – and stepped aside just in time to avoid being crashed into by one of the burlier male servants on his way out. Self-closing double doors had their drawbacks here like they did everywhere else, Candlekeep included.  
  
He put the gnome down once they were out of the way. “I apologise for placing you in such danger and for any stress my sister has unduly inflicted upon you. May I invite you to dine with us as compensation?”  
  
Bentley blinked up at him, gaping. At his supposed audacity or whatever else, Cyrus actually couldn’t tell. Which could only mean Bentley had no idea what to feel himself.  
  
“I have learned to have faith in whatever original projects Imoen undertakes, however spontaneous,” the dwarf explained. He thought about the songs she’d come up with out of nowhere over the past few days, one of which effectively tipped the scales in mortal combat against a fallen deity. “ _Especially_ when they are spontaneous.”  
  
The gnome groaned again and sunk his face in his hands. “I’m this close to a nervous breakdown and he _invites_ me to spend more time with the cause behind it,” he muttered, then sighed in defeat and let his hands fall. “You know what, just… just forget about it.”  
  
Cyrus’ face fell. He didn’t have enough experience with a full range of emotion to always mask them. “Everything I do only seems destined to further to upset you.”  
  
“Oh, lad, don’t say it that way.” The gnome’s tone took a turn for the distressed. “I’m just under... I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”  
  
“As opposed to taking it out on someone else?” The question made Bentley pinch his nose but Cyrus continued anyway. “As opposed to just bottling up the stress until it threatens your health?”  
  
“Well… what do you want me to say?!” he exploded, much like he had that morning. “It wasn’t enough that you cause that racket last night doing… whatever it was!” The gnome stormed off and started to move bottles and kegs to more accessible places behind his bar counter, for the “waitress” currently manning it to more easily reach. Since he seemed to still be talking to him, Cyrus followed. “No, you just _had_ to derail any righteous venting with that display immediately after. How’s a man supposed to let out some steam when you go and give him a fortune and hug him besides!” Bentley threw his hands in the air, then caught himself and tried to pass it off as reaching for a wine bottle to hand the “lass” at the bar.  
  
Cyrus helpfully got it and passed it over for him.  
  
“There you go again, being all… argh!” Bentley beat his head against a shelf bracket with an audible thump. “And then you look at me like that and I feel like a bully.” The gnome leaned against the shelves and dropped his head. “Worse than a puppy you are,” he muttered under his breath. “And don’t you even get me started on that spectacle with the assassin mage! Not only did it cause a ruckus everywhere but I’ve already had a bunch of latecomers showing up just because of that! They were hunters headed straight for the ankheg felling fields north of here but they heard the story from one of the people who left after breakfast and decided to turn back and stop in the hopes of more _entertainment_.” He practically spat that word as if it were a curse. “I can almost see the throng of troublemakers and zealots alike descending in droves on this place in the next few weeks. And the Flaming Fist! The news no doubt reached Beregost by now too! Bloody assassins! Bloody Cyricists, bringing trouble to my Inn!”  
  
“… I offer my sincere apologies.”  
  
“Will you stop doing that!?” Bentley exploded, rounding on him completely uncaring of the wide-eyed customers at the bar and effectively fulfilling their hopes for more _entertainment_. “Will you just… will you stop making yourself a target for my temper, lad?” Suddenly he seemed utterly weary. “You and yours are the last people who should be concerned with reprisals from me. Garl knows I have no rights to complain after that fortune you dumped on me this morning.” He carried a beer keg to the bar – the counter had pull-out steps to make it easy on his stature – and then returned, took out a small notebook on which he begun listing things to bring up from the cellar. “With what those diamonds are worth, not to mention your king’s gift, I doubt I’ll be able to look you and yours in the eye if I ever charge you anything for the rest of your lives.”  
  
“Well that might be going a bit far,” Cyrus said, taking his cue from Bentley and not worrying overmuch about eavesdroppers. It wasn’t like Bentley didn’t already have valuables stashed somewhere or other. And the walls had eyes and ears. Almost literally. The man could magically look through various pieces of furniture and even strategically placed bricks and wall blocks. It was how he’d watched the “duel” without having to go outside. Security was not a concern. “Saying you’ll provide free service for the rest of our lives might not be the wisest thing.”  
  
“Don’t tell me a dwarf of all things doesn’t know the value of diamonds,” Bentley huffed drily.  
  
“My disagreement stems from trying to afford infinity a finite value.” When that reply earned him a confused blink, the dwarf clarified. “What I mean to say is that two out of the five of us are immortal.” Various soul-flares, gasps and choking on beverage occurred across the counter. It actually confused him. There were whole _races_ that were immortal, elves chief among them. Those reactions were hardly warranted. “So you see, promising free service for as long as _we_ live would be rather counterproductive for you.”  
  
Bentley Mirrorshade just… stopped and stared at him for a while. “…You’re an odd lad.” He placed his pen – _dwarven work, the gnome had excellent taste_ – back in his chest pocket and looked in his eyes for a while. “You don’t have a duplicitous bone in your body, do you?”  
  
Cyrus thought about the… exclusionary detailing he performed when informing Khelben and Elminster about things. Or, rather, failed to fully inform them in order to avoid putting their loyalty to him in conflict with their loyalty to Mystra.  
  
Bentley still wasn’t wrong, even though Cyrus _had_ been thinking of his own existence as well at the time.  
  
“What’s wrong, good innkeeper?” Cyrus asked instead, finally starting to figure out what all those conflicting signals were. “Really.”  
  
The gnome made a disagreeable noise at the bottom of his throat and made for the door nearby, the one that led to the cellars and shared a passage to the scullery. Cyrus thought he was being dismissed but Bentley held the door for him, so he followed him through.  
  
“Sensitive issues?” Cyrus asked as he followed the gnome downstairs.  
  
“No. But I _do_ have work to do, more so than usual.”  
  
“I don’t mean to-“  
  
“Don’t you even _try_ to claim you don’t mean to pry.”  
  
“-be underfoot or otherwise impede your livelihood.” Cyrus finished. “And of course I mean to pry,” the dwarf replied. “You deserve better than bottling up whatever is weighing on your mind.”  
  
“And there you go, saying things like that,” Bentley didn’t seem to know how he should feel at the moment. “Why even bother asking? It’s not your problem.”  
  
“By that logic the damage to our suite wasn’t my problem either since I caused none of it,” the dwarf answered as they descended. “Regardless, my father holds to the adage that shared pain is lessened, shared joy increased.” He’d never really understood that, lacking any capacity for emotion of his own, but he did now. And he positively _disliked_ the web of frustration/stress/old-anger that grasped at the edges of the gnome’s coruscating soul star. More so than in the self-centred manner of most of his life.  
  
“…I do have a wife to unload on you know.” But it was a feeble attempt at deflection and they both knew it.  
  
“Your soul says otherwise.”  
  
Bentley tossed him a startled glance over his shoulder as he got off the last step, but he was far from unintelligent and immediately connected that answer to his display that morning. He made to pick up a case of cider bottles – _déjà vu, Reevor_ – but faltered and released a long, deep breath. Instead, he climbed to sit on one of the many crates and tried to figure out what to say.  
  
He wasn’t even sure he should take the invitation, from what Cyrus could sense.  
  
Fortunately, the dwarf himself wasn’t so hesitant. “I have no ulterior motives for being here.” He wanted those grasping tendrils _gone_. “You have nothing to fear from me.”  
  
“You said that before,” Bentley huffed, crossing his arms. Then he decided it looked silly – _it didn’t, really, but to each his own_ – and unfolded them, grasping the edge of the crate instead. “It’s nothing too grand, lad, if you really must know. This has just been a terrible week.”  
  
Images, words and feelings started to take shape in Cyrus’ mind, filling gaps in the insight he’d been slowly building up since even before laying eyes on the gnome that very morning during his… _episode_.  
  
“First a whole caravan breaks down just hours away and they deplete more than half my stock of supplies and good iron patching it up. That was eight days ago. Then there’s a bandit raid on it at night and I lose a third of my guards after sending them out to help beat them back. One of them was my captain,” a wave of soul-deep pain washed over him but he batted it aside as best he could. They’d been friends. “The post-battle clean-up and injuries were as bad as you could imagine, but that wasn’t enough for some people. No. They wailed, cried and complained. That alone would have been fine, robbery, assault and death do that to people. But it wasn’t enough for them, they just _had_ to slander my wife when she couldn’t revive more than 2 people.” The gnome hopped off the crate and started pacing, angrier by the second. “Because the healing she provided wasn’t good enough apparently. And the mercenaries of that blasted, greedy dwarf in Beregost only jeered and made things worse every minute my wife was there. As if everyone doesn’t already know how hard it is on a cleric to raise the dead, let alone do a true resurrection! They barely had the skills to stabilise the dying but they had the _gall_ to accuse my wife of holding out on them! As if resurrection spells grow on trees! They had absolutely no favour with our gods and even looked down on gnomes besides! To say nothing of them complaining about the material cost it took to try for the two that she managed to bring back! As if material costs weren’t divinely-ordained. What kind of logic did those people even use? _Death isn’t cheap!_ ” The gnome’s soul flared with bright beams of red rage as he paced to and fro. “They eventually resumed their journey south but they didn’t clean up after themselves, leaving some supply wagons behind due to the lessened manpower. Supplies they wouldn’t sell to us out of sheer spite for us being so ‘disagreeable.’ Petty revenge for me not suffering fools within my walls no doubt. So of _course_ hobgoblin bandits descend on the surroundings by the next morning to scavenge and take potshots at lone travellers over the next few days. Hobgoblins! As if human bandits weren’t already bad enough to deal with, especially with the iron crisis. I don’t even want to imagine the problems that I’ll have with whatever replacement iron I manage to trade for, if any. And those hobgoblins are out there even now, within sight of the higher parapets, the scum.”  
  
They were. Cyrus had sensed them clearly during his brief moment of whatever it was.  
  
“And to put the final nail into a truly terrible week, just three days ago one of the more competent of North-bound travellers manages to evade the wandering hobgoblin bands and avail himself of the Inn’s services. He was a bard, or so he claimed. He certainly had the charm for it, the snake. Being that he provided news of the way of Nashkel, I decided to humour him when he offered to ‘sing for his supper.’ We get little entertainment here, so I thought it worth the chance. HA! Within two insulting songs he had the whole place in riot! It’ll take me a fortnight to repair all the damage. Most of the furniture in the common room is old spares, and you probably noticed just how much free space there still is. And the vagabond had the _gall_ to say it was all my fault for ‘providing so much and such excellent wine with the meal’ as he made his escape. He even made off with three bottles!” Bentley’s hands moved in front of him as if to strangle some phantom enemy.  
  
Cyrus Anwar looked upon the gnome and finally understood why Bentley had been reacting in such a haphazard way to him, and spat the word "entertainment" with such loathing. “I reminded you of him then?”  
  
The gnome deflated and leaned against the closest crate – full of bean sacks – and folded his arms, not meeting his eyes. “I don’t even know why, honestly. You’re nothing like him.”  
  
“But you didn’t believe that until a short time ago.”  
  
“I don’t… I don’t know what I thought,” the gnome closed his eyes and rubbed them with his fingertips.  
  
“Maybe it was just too similar to soon, to have your best suite damaged after that vagabond all but ruined the common room.”  
  
“Even so it was obvious you’d done none of it,” Bentley exhaled and forced himself to return Cyrus’ gaze. “I’ve been a terrible host since then just because you didn’t look contrite while you not only fixed the damage but even repaid me for it several thousand times over. It wasn’t fair to you. I’m sorry.”  
  
Well, self-recrimination wasn’t what he’d hoped to achieve with this talk at all. “We disturbed the peace,” he eventually said. “So I can only accept your apology and offer my own again.”  
  
“Will you stop _saying_ that?” the gnome grumbled. “You gave me a sack of diamonds!” he waved his hands wildly through the air. “That’s beyond fair recompense. Garl’s moustache, just _one_ diamond would be beyond fair recompense! I can’t accept them all!” That the sack was still in their suite corroborated that. “What were you even thinking when you… when you...”  
  
“That you deserve each and every one of them and more.”  
  
Bentley shut his mouth and looked away, face going pink. “And there you go again, saying things like that. I… I don’t know how to behave around you, lad.”  
  
Did he even realise how adorable he was? And at his age even. “Whatever way comes naturally seems to be going just fine so far.”  
  
“Just fine he says,” the gnome muttered, pacing again, if less frantically. “So far, doing what comes naturally seems to consist of me yelling and otherwise doing wrong by you, lad.”  
  
“Well you _did_ come across me immediately after being exposed to Imoen,” because it begged mentioning. “I am well aware that exposure to her can be a trying experience when one is not familiar with her more endearing traits.”  
  
“I can’t even claim _that_ as the reason,” Bentley mumbled, looking at the case of cider bottles he’d come down there for. “Yes, she may have … commandeered one each of the cooking counters and the ovens but otherwise she wasn’t underfoot at all. She’s even helpful actually. She seems to know just what needed doing around the place when her attention isn’t needed by… whatever she’s preparing. Some meat pie it looked like.” He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face.  
  
“But the cook didn’t appreciate her presence,” Cyrus finished for him, turning to look up in the direction of the kitchens where the portly woman’s soul and Imoen’s seemed to be, among others. “Though tensions seem to have thawed somewhat now.”  
  
“Maybe they’ll share recipes and it will give old Hilda a distraction for a short while.” The gnome set a crate of cider aside for pickup and moved to the nectar shelves along the walls. “Having her routine broken is what probably hit her the most. She’s been burying herself in it since the attack on the caravan.” The innkeeper carried three wine bottles over to the crate top where the cider case was, then turned to give Cyrus a pained smile. “My guard captain was her husband.”  
  
Ah.  
  
The discussion stalled at that point and it wasn’t an entirely comfortable silence that followed. Bentley busied himself with ferrying more bottles for quicker delivery upstairs while Cyrus watched the souls in the kitchen interact. The closest term he could find for it was passive-aggressive cooperation with grudging hints of fondness on the side of the older woman. Imoen had always known how to charm people.  
  
Finally, though, Bentley couldn’t take the awkward silence anymore. “So…” he put a large vase on the crate top – De’Tranion’s Baalor Ale – and wiped his hands with a cloth. “Sister, huh?”  
  
“Not in the standard sense, obviously,” the dwarf replied, turning back to him. “But that term best describes our relationship since we were five.”  
  
Bentley, who’d been in the process of reaching for the first wine bottle he would be taking upstairs, suddenly froze and his spirit flared with horror.  
  
Cyrus paid more active attention and read him to see why he would…  
  
Oh dear.  
  
Bentley Mirrorshade whirled around, aghast. “What did you just say!?”  
  
“I know what you’re thinking but that is not-“  
  
“You and that girl are the same age!?” The gnome burst, cutting him off. “You… you’re the same age!?” The man was entirely overcome by sheer distress.  
  
“Yes, but-“  
  
“But she can’t be older than twenty summers!” The innkeeper cried, shrilly almost. “You… you’re no older that twenty summers! You’re no older than twenty summers!?”  
  
“That doesn’t-“  
  
But he didn’t get a word in edgewise. “Oh Glittering Garl, what have I done!?” Bentley Mirrorshade cried in despair, grabbing with both hands at his face. He started pacing more frantically than he’d ever done before in Cyrus short acquaintance with him “A dwarf! A twenty-year old _dwarf_! Curse me for a fool that I can’t even tell a grown dwarf from one not even half-way into his adulthood! Even though I had an adult dwarf dining at my table all morning!” And he didn’t let Cyrus reply at all, naturally.  
  
“My age isn’t-“  
  
He rounded on him, finger raised. “You’re barely a stripling! Oh this is terrible!” He started pacing again, twisting his hands in self-reproof. “I’m a fool! A blind fool! I’ve been airing my woes to a boy!” he rounded on him again, wild-eyed. “Why are you even on the road!? You should be in your tunnel home listening to ancestor tales and learning your family trade, not painting a target on your back and letting mage assassins take potshots at you!” He gasped in even greater horror as stark yellow overcame almost everything in his soul-light. “You let that assassin take _potshots_ at you! You-“ he bit back his words, suddenly even more horrified with himself and resumed his frantic pacing. “And now I’m yelling at you again! I’ve been _yelling_ at an innocent lad every time I laid eyes on him and thinking the worst of him when he’s not even old enough to-“  
  
Okay, this was quite enough. “I _can_ hug you again you know.” That seemed to shut him up before.  
  
“Oh lad!” Bentley rounded on him, eyes misty and soulful, then suddenly threw his arms around him. Which meant he didn’t actually manage to reach past his sides given how thin and tiny he was, but he got points for effort Cyrus supposed. “If you wanted a hug all you had to do was ask.”  
  
The dwarf blinked in surprise and automatically hugged the gnome back.  
  
Well.  
  
This conversation went sideways fast, he thought with a burst of laughter. “You, good gnome, are ridiculous.”  
  
“I’m ridiculous!?” But he didn’t look up or pull away in the least. “Not you who go around… What were you thinking!? And that father of yours, he’s-!?”  
  
“Off limits,” Cyrus cut in, voice firm and with an edge he hadn’t used against Bentley before. “He’s done everything, given everything, lived solely for me for the past 20 years and nearly died for me a few nights past during an ambush.” He carefully but firmly detached the little man and waited for him to look up. “I will brook _no_ ill words against him, not even from you.”  
  
Bentley swallowed and nodded.  
  
Cyrus released him and gave him a sharp gaze. “As for your latest misgivings, do believe me when I say I passed the equivalent of 20-year dwarven mental development when I was five.” He reached up to twist the tip of his beard between his fingers. “This beard isn’t just for show you know.” Honestly, he’d worked so carefully on it over the years and even had to regrow it a short time ago. Did people think it was fake? Like a wig? He let go of the braid and frowned at the proprietor. “My divine progenitor made sure I would mature by the same time all his other spawn did.” He allowed his bearing to soften and a bitter smile to colour his words. “All the better to kill or be killed now that the last of us are coming of age.”  
  
“Oh lad…” Bentley said sadly.  
  
There was a heavy silence.  
  
Cyrus decided he may as well be the one to break it this time. “I engaged you in conversation in the hopes that I might help restore some of your inner peace but it seems I have only accomplished the opposite.”  
  
“Now don’t say that,” the gnome replied, looking like he was about to go frantic again but-  
  
Cyrus suddenly stiffened as _unrest_ reached the inn. He abruptly turned to look in the direction where frantic/dread/exhausted collapsed to his knees just outside the outer gate. At least as far as he could tell from the way the distant lights played beyond the floor and walls.  
  
“Young man?”  
  
“Trouble,” he strode to the crate and picked up the cider case. “News just reached the inn.” He tucked the case under an arm and picked up three wine bottles with his other hand. “News that is about to quite thoroughly disturb the peace if your establishment.” It was the only reason he even saw and sensed that far.  
  
He used telekinesis to make the remaining three bottles followed in his wake and strode to and up the stairs.  
  
“There’s always something,” the gnome growled as he followed in his wake.  
  
He held the door open for Bentley to precede him and the both of them emerged back into the common room with just enough time to stash the beverages in their proper places. That was when one of the guards burst though the doors, looking frantically around for the owner.  
  
The man cast off-colour lights of lime/blue/haste and then erupted in sheer relief when he saw Bentley Mirrorshade. The relief of one who was glad that he wouldn’t have to handle the latest problem. “Sir! A runner just arrived! The trade caravan bound for Baldur’s Gate got waylaid by bandits in broad daylight and almost didn’t manage to fight them off! They’ll be reaching us in less than an hour with wounded! One of them is the son of one of the Grand Dukes!”  
  
The whole common room seemed to freeze and Cyrus grimly noted that quite a few of them were actually _excited_ at the latest turn of events.  
  
Bentley’s misgivings had never been more justified.  
  
Well. “Time to get to work,” both dwarf and gnome said in unison, much to the latter’s surprise.  
  
Then Bentley gave a short, grim sigh and a familiar scarlet hue flared from him as he begun to snap out orders to his guards, his waitresses, his scullery whelps and even some of the more obviously excited patrons just to spite them for their improper reactions to the situation.  
  
Cyrus watched the man and frowned when the messenger stammered that no, he’d forgotten to inform Gellanna Mirrorshade of her impending patients – “So go tell her, man, must I handwalk you through this!?” – and shook his head before going upstairs to get his father and the others.  
  
There was always something.


	16. Too Many Egg Baskets Have Their Downsides Too

In the end it turned out that Eddard Silvershield’s life was not actually in danger as opposed to the close calls during the bandit ambush. While he was indeed among the wounded, he’d gotten off with just bruises and a fractured right forearm which had already been splinted by the time the caravan reached the Friendly Arm. It effectively destroyed his bracer along with his combat ability but with not one but two Clerics available that situation wasn’t about to last long.

Or it wouldn’t have if the man had accepted immediate treatment, but to his credit he had Gellanna and her handful of acolytes see to the caravan guards and the few wounded tradesmen first. Around two dozen had to be helped or outright loaded off the carts and wagons and spread on the ground just inside the Friendly Arm’s walls. The Temple of Wisdom – _odd name for a house of worship devoted to Garl Glittergold but it wasn’t like Cyrus expected gods and their followers to really make proper sense_ – was far too small to house everyone and it wasn’t exactly an infirmary to begin with.

Along with Khalid, Cyrus helped unload the wounded while Gellanna and Jaheira saw to the wounds, starting with the ones worst off. There were many who’d been knocked unconscious due to blood loss, blows to the head or poisoned arrows or cuts, but other than the four who’d run afoul of poison all the ambush survivors had already been stabilized. The injured – _all humans save for one gnomish tradesman_ – were laid down in two rows along the southern wall of the fortress proper while Bentley figured out accommodations for everyone and the stable boys led the horses away. Guards and servants ran all over the place carrying various messages and even more various healing potions, salves, ointments and herbs for the priestess and druid to use.

Then, a couple of minutes in, that unknown priest of Moradin that had left the inn early that morning hopped off the last cart, came to where the wounded had been laid out, briefly brought his outstretched palms together in prayer and stepped between the two rows.

White healing light emerged from him, shining faintly but visibly in all direction, and the ground he walked on seemed to fill with it too, casting light of its own with every step he took. Everyone he walked by breathed easier and the open wounds in view visibly scabbed over if not outright closed. His eyes were closed but he walked as surely as though they were open, never making a false step as he made his slow way from one end of the two rows to the other. Which was fortunate because dwarves were heavy even on the best of days and the priest wore a full bronze field plate besides. One wrong step and someone would lose an ear. Or their skull along with everything in it.

At least that was what Imoen would have said, Cyrus thought absently as he finished knitting a mercenary’s throat back together. The man would probably have never spoken properly again, if at all, but the young dwarf figured he would get away with just a week or two of being sore now. The Bhaalspawn – _did he even qualify as one anymore?_ – relaxed unbidden when the older dwarf passed him and his patient by. The warm waves of positive energy seemed to return lustre to everything, him included. It confirmed his thoughts that certain spells or spell effects would still work on him, but Cyrus was content to not dwell on that thought too much. He couldn’t say the same of the way his head seemed to clear of some weight he hadn’t truly noticed – _mental strain from the focus demanded by his unconventional healing method_ – if only slightly.

Cyrus climbed to his feet and looked between Jaheira, Gellanna and the priest whose name he _still_ hadn’t learned, then at the twenty-four people laid out on the ground.

They had this totally under control.

Thus reasoned, he turned away and made for the foot of the main fortress stairs where Eddard Silvershield was listening to a Flaming Fist mercenary – _half of the single surviving pair out of a total of five designated bodyguards_ – giving him a status report on manpower (or lack thereof), the time it would take to heal everyone (at least 2 days even if they rushed things), and the time it would take to perform repairs on the wagons after the gallop over (even longer, assuming Bentley had iron to spare, which was a toss-up). And then there was the exhaustion of the animals to consider too.

Good. There was only the one Flaming Fist mercenary there with him.

Cyrus reached them just as the two begun to debate the benefits of pushing forward with the caravan or waiting for a detachment of Flaming Fist mercenaries to come from Baldur’s Gate to escort them home. The odds of their death seemed to rise the more the idea of waiting for new escorts was discussed, but it was fairly high as things stood even without them. So…

Time to nip that in the bud. “I strongly advise against the second option.”

“Who dares-!” The Flaming Fist mercenary – _Jerrick_ – whirled around and glared at the empty space over Cyrus’ head before looking down. “Who in the Nine Hells are you to interrupt his lordship’s conversation, _dwarf_?” His soul was a field of bland colours with just the barest spark at the core. Lawful but with only the most basic morals of his own definition. Too bad his attitude problem prevented that spark from igniting into a truly self-determined personality.

That he expected the word referring to an entire species to be taken as an insult was rather sad really.

Cyrus frowned. There was always at least one uppity specimen among all minion groups. “Since you’re not part of the Flaming Fist splinter group working to undermine your own city, I’m going to let that slide.”

“WHAT?!” The man’s – _Jerrick_ – hand flew to the hilt of the longsword at his side as he made a half-step backwards. “What did you just say?”

Cyrus considered repeating word for word but decided it would help nothing with how outraged the man was. Especially with his Father having emerged from within the Inn and coming down the stairs, finally. Instead, he looked at the Grand Duke’s son – _only a couple of years his senior_ – and greeted him. “Greetings. I am Cyrus Anwar, son of the Sage Gorion of Candlekeep and technical Bhaalspawn.”

With something like a shout, Jerrick drew his sword in one, quick arc and was more than half-way into the motion of pressing its tip against Cyrus’ neck when a white wooden shaft struck his wrist from below – _the sword went flying straight up_ – then swung to half-strike, half-push the mercenary back by his neck, making him teeter backwards dangerously. His reflexive attempt to grab the staff halted mid-way when the Staff of Healing – _charge-less but still a viable item in every other way_ – shimmered with magical energy.

Cyrus reached up to grab the falling sword just as it came within his reach.

“I will be the first to admit there was no misunderstanding in anything stated just now,” Father said levelly. His voice carried the sort of resonance mages usually only imbued it with when casting. It certainly arrested both men. “But you’ll pardon me if I have an issue with your reaction, however justified. That’s my son whose neck you were swinging your sword at just now. I hope you understand.”

Cyrus helpfully held the sword out for the mercenary to take back, prompting Gorion to pull his staff away. Jerrick’s face moved through several expressions as he mutinously yanked his sword back but he didn’t make to attack again even if he didn’t sheathe it either.

“… Hail,” Eddard Silvershield said at last, looking between Gorion and his guard before turning to him. Brown hair, square jaw, straight nose, blue eyes. Not altogether vanished veil of inexperience. “I apologise for my bodyguard’s abruptness but it has been a trying day, as is no doubt evident.” His splinted arm shifted for emphasis as he paid no heed to his guard’s not-quite-concealed disbelief over his approach to the situation. “And you must admit that the way you chose to go about introductions hardly helped, good sir.” He made a good effort at taking the situation and his parentage in stride, Cyrus noted. At least openly. His inner colours were a trembling mass of _pale/worry/bravado_ much less calm than moments before.

A shame, since he actually was fairly well-meaning at the heart of it. “I take it the Forgesmith over yonder did not deign to bring up the spectacle of this morning then?” Cyrus glanced back to where the dwarf in question seemed to be done healing everyone around him just by walking around. Jaheira and Gellana seemed to have finished with the worst cases as well.

“He did not speak much at all as a matter of fact,” the young noble answered dryly. “He came upon our caravan by pure chance just in time to turn the tide against the bandit ambush that had been sprung on us. One moment there were swords swinging and arrows flying, the next a wave of terror seemed to spread through our attackers.” Eddard Silvershield’s lips took a wry twist. “The gigantic hammer of light that fell down from the sky and sent the worst of the lot dying or tumbling blindly certainly helped as well.” With a blink, the human noble shook his head clear of the memory. “But to answer your question, no, he did not provide any news, or even his name, and I did not have the time to ask. We were rather more focused on keeping the wounded alive and arriving here as quickly as possible. He has spent nearly every moment on the road healing, praying and meditating.”

“I see…” Cyrus hummed, then looked between the man’s tired face and his arm.

“Milord!” Jerrick finally couldn’t contain himself, glaring suspiciously at Cyrus and Gorion as he gnashed his teeth. “Do not be so easily swept into their rhythm! You owe them no information! You cannot simply… ignore what they just said!”

“You mean his nature as child of the old lord of murder?” Eddard asked his guard, the perfect picture of someone too tired to actually get riled up over even that. “Or perhaps that throwaway mention about a splinter group in our region and city’s main police force?”

“What’s this now?” Gorion asked his son, frowning down at Cyrus in consternation. “Did you get accosted by assassins without telling me again?”

Cyrus ignored the bemused reaction that engendered in the other two humans. “Other than that rather disagreeable wizard this morning, no. This news is a bit older than that.” His mouth quirked down at a corner. “But the past few days and nights have been rather busy with other things.”

Gorion’s head dropped as he rubbed his forehead. “Khelben was right,” the name earned a double-take from the noble son but only Cyrus was alert enough to notice it. “You really _do_ need to work on that concept known as volunteering information.”

The dwarf shrugged. He thought about bringing up the fact that he had, in fact, provided them with a whole stack of papers detailing everything he knew but that was an ultimately irrelevant tangent. Instead, he met Eddard’s eyes again. “Eddard Silvershield, son of Entar Silvershield, Grand Duke of Baldur’s Gate.” He gestured to his father. “Be known to the Sage Gorion, Great Reader of the Library Fortress of Candlekeep, Master of the Arcane Arts and my Father.”

Jerrick looked like he wanted to say something about the “father” part – _his soul literally churned with that seething murk known as disdain_ – but he did know what propriety was.

“Well met,” Eddard said, shaking Gorion’s hand with his left, since the right arm was currently useless. He wasn’t quite sure it was “well” met but he had nothing to go on besides protocol. Cyrus read it all off his soul as easily as he did anyone else.

Which was part of the reason Cyrus had used the wording he did.

And since the still unnamed dwarven priest finally joined them just moments after, Cyrus decided to speak up before the scene trailed off into silent awkwardness. “I’d originally come here intending to offer to heal your arm.” Eddard’s bodyguard made a supremely distrustful face as Eddard himself blinked at the non-sequitur. “But since the Forgesmith is here and you likely trust him more, perhaps we should ask his opinion.” Cyrus turned to behold the old dwarf – _venerable really, though his face wasn’t too overtaken with wrinkles even so_ – just as he came to a stop next to him and the noble. “It _is_ Forgesmith, yes? Or should I use Honored Tempered to address you?”

“You may call me Torrin.” His voice was not as deep as Cyrus had expected. Nor was it rough or gravelly. Coupled with the flame-coloured spectral glass interposed over his physical self, it reminded Cyrus more of smouldering coals rather than the crackling forge fire he’d always associated with Moradin’s priests in his mind. But the old dwarf was still speaking. “Torrin of the Ironstar clan hailing from Eartheart, at your service.” He bowed his head to them with a humble smile, then turned to Eddard Silvershield before addressing the man directly. “My apologies for my quiet manner on the road but there are rules and rites to calling on the power of Moradin, many of which I had to eschew given the abruptness of our departure and the haste that needed to be made.” He fiddled with his main beard clasp in what seemed to Cyrus an absent fashion. He couldn’t be sure without actually seeing the man’s soul, which he couldn’t, like he never could read anything off Tethtoril either. Only the glass-like veil of still flame was there for him to see. “By your leave, I shall see to that arm of yours now.”

With careful movements and a minimum of wincing, the man removed his sling and allowed the priest to stretch his arm out in front of him. The priest studied it for some moments, eyes gaining a faint glow.

Then Torrin surprised everyone by holding the arm out for Cyrus to inspect. “You said you intended to heal him. What do you make of this?”

The younger dwarf blinked, then shrugged and looked at the limb, past the skin to the flesh, bone and blood vessels. “Three fractures, one on the main bone, two splitting the secondary in three pieces. Separated section has shifted partly sideways, tearing the muscle. Five chips have loosened even further, cutting through a number of blood vessels, fortunately minor. Severe muscle tears as well, with some severed nerves on top of everything else.” He blinked back to normal sight and looked up from his inspection.

“Healable sure enough, with some care,” Torrin hummed, looking at the forearm as well. “But merely throwing positive energy at the problem will more likely than not fail to heal it properly, leaving it forever weak and possibly crooked. The bone chips will surely be a permanent source of pain and reduction in ability as well. I would say we have to use a costly spell or perform a surgery.”

“I see,” Eddard said uncomfortably.

“But you already knew this,” Torrin told Cyrus, looking at him levelly.

“Yes.”

“And you offered to heal it regardless.”

“Yes.” He did not bother elaborating despite the angry (Jerrick) and unsure (Eddard) looks being thrown his way.

“I can’t imagine it could be any harder than reattaching an arm severed at the shoulder,” Gorion dryly interceded from where he’d been watching to the side, surprising the other two humans.

Cyrus wondered what Khelben would say to this, but he and Elminster were both still in their suite communicating with their respective proxies back home. Since neither of them were really healers, not in the magical sense at least, Cyrus ultimately didn’t interrupt them when he went upstairs earlier, only informing Gorion of recent developments.

“A true achievement indeed,” Torrin nodded to himself and looked at Cyrus again. “Go ahead then.”

“I hardly think-“ Jerrick was cut off when both Gorion and Torrin glared and gazed flatly at him, respectively.

The priest switched to Eddard next, expression unchanged. “I will put a halt to things if issues arise, but I am fairly certain none will.”

And he was right. Not three minutes later Cyrus pulled his spirit back into himself – _the strands and eddies of healing light sunk back into his palms_ – and let his hands fall from where they’d been hovering on both sides of the man’s forearm.

Eddard Silvershield flexed his arm several times, testing reach, flexibility, strength and the lingering pain, or lack thereof. “Amazing…” He murmured, finding everything in perfect order. He smiled and his shoulders sagged slightly in relief. He’d really been momentarily worried about living with a crippling wound forever, despite that there was more than enough individual skill nearby to prevent that. “My thanks.” It was honest gratitude, if not quite as high as it would have been in absence of a powerful cleric to act as insurance.

Which was when the second of Eddard Silvershield’s remaining bodyguards emerged from around the fortress corner – the direction to the privies – did a double take at the gathering, put on a professional face and walked over to stand sentry on the man’s other side.

Cyrus gave his soul a long look, confirmed the reason he’d taken so long, pulled out a copper coin and started spinning it across his fingers.

Then he turned to Gorion. “Father. Be known to Rosk, Flaming Fist mercenary loyal to Angelo Dosan, the turncoat officer working for Sarevok Anchev as part of his plot to start a war between Baldur’s Gate and Amn.” The gathered people froze in shock at that monumental accusation coming out so suddenly and in a tone as offhand as one might use when talking about a day at the market. “Of course, that will only be set in motion once the iron crisis sufficiently destabilizes the region and the Flaming Fist is taken over by the dissident faction by the expedient of assassinating Scar.” The gathered people just remained frozen and outright gaping, with one exception that was quickly turning from _shocked/greed/poison_ to _alarmed/greed/spite_. “Granted, even that will merely be a prelude to assassinating the Grand Dukes, starting with-“

Rosk lunged forward, wrapped an arm around Eddard Silvershield’s neck and was already bringing his other hand around the other side, holding a poisoned dagger-

_Empower Momentum._

A flick and the coin plowed through the traitor’s wrist – _the dagger flew from his grasp and glanced off Jerrick’s cuirass on the way down_ – with enough force to rip Rosk’s entire hand off.

He fell back with a howl.

Less than half a minute later, a pale and clammy Eddard Silvershield – _prestidigitation to clean his face and clothes of gore before he notices it_ – was flanked by Cyrus and Gorion while Jerrick stood in front of him with his sword pointed at the fallen and moaning traitor. Torrin was the only one not forming some part of their impromptu formation,  having instead lunged around the nobleman the very moment Cyrus flung his “weapon” at the enemy – _a minute tightening of the eyes just as Cyrus pulled the coin out, made the connection to his dispatching of Tarnesh earlier in the day?_ – and hauled the dissenter off Eddard by the scruff just as his hand was blown off. Currently the warrior priest was right next to Rosk’s head, a blue, see-through spiritual hammer hovering just above his face, ready to crush it to pulp at a moment’s notice.

Gaining a fully emotional range had certainly done much good to Cyrus’ ability to predict emotional responses. Such as panic when so thoroughly off-balance by having one’s deepest, darkest secret tossed out like refuse. Along with a fair bit of the greater plot one wasn’t aware off.

Having his own initiative was _wonderful_. It allowed him to get people to expose themselves and confirm the veracity of his information even when he had _absolutely no proof_.

But Cyrus brought up and basked in none of that because the man next to him seemed on the verge of panic himself – _erratic soulscape, shaken from being so close to death twice in the same day, hadn’t actually internalized what it meant before that moment –_ and just about ready for his knees to give out under him, mind hanging only onto the self-recrimination of having taken his armour off as soon as he was within the walls of the Friendly Arm.

Cyrus reached up and pressed his hand against the small of his back, not looking at him.

The man gave a small start and certainly looked at _him_ , but then managed to rally his flagging willpower and forced some strength back into his legs before they collapsed from under him.

That accomplished, Cyrus clasped his hands behind his back and walked around the fallen, bleeding man to give him a look through narrowed eyes. Rosk was lucky Arawn was off hunting hobgoblins in the surrounding area, otherwise Cyrus might have just set him on the man depending on what fate was decided for him.

But that decision wasn’t up to him so instead he looked up from the man, opened his mouth, closed it, kicked Rosk in the head when he tried to lunge at him despite Torrin being _right there_ – _mad with pain and fear of death, gone berserk from pain and knowing there was no escape_ – and stepped away just as the spiritual hammer crushed the evil man’s head to paste.

“Wretched man,” Torrin said gruffly, looking down at the dead human as his hammer dispersed into fleeting wisps of light. “I believe this qualifies as a lesson to use Detect Alignment on everyone I meet from now on.”

Well.

_Prestidigitation to clean off the blood and brain matter._

Cyrus Anwar looked between Torrin, Gorion and Jerrick before settling on Eddard who looked like he was ready to take any suggestion as long as it got him at least part of the way to warm, safe and sitting. “Would you like to join us for dinner?”


	17. All Big Quests Start in Taverns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The folks at The Gibberlings 3 are the ones you have to thank for most of the banter between Gellanna and Imoen. I leaned on the Romantic Encounters mod to figure out her voice.
> 
> Also, Ed Greenwood's claims that Elminster & others meet in his house to talk and eat earth food? That happens to be a minor plot point.
> 
> That said, have a chapter.

Minutes after the latest bit of chaos, Eddard Silvershield was safely ensconced in the deepest seat of the corner booth in the common room of the Friendly Arm. The same booth Torrin had sat in that morning and which Cyrus had reserved for their party after Imoen’s unilateral decision to ‘undo the injustice of him never getting an actual birthday celebration this year.’ The human was pale and clammy while wrestling with shock over the almost lethal betrayal despite Torrin using a divine recitation to dampen it. Eddard’s hands slightly shook even while tightly gripping the cup of Khelben’s special blend of roasted chicory which Gorion had pushed into his grasp as soon as he’d sat down.

His soul was a mess of uneven waves and vortices. Flashbacks, memories and self-doubt kept springing from the recollections of his interactions with the man who’d tried to kill him.

Cyrus watched with hidden sympathy. Eddard Silvershield had some of the worst luck. Reached adulthood and started getting assigned the serious heir duties in preparation of taking over for his father, only to get the first long-distance assignment just as the region caught several metaphorical fires. He’d been sent on a diplomatic trade mission to Nashkel to both renegotiate iron deals and find out what was causing the Iron Crisis, only to manage a partial success at best and run afoul of bandit attacks on the way back. The caravan would have been doomed if not for Torrin, and there had been that Flaming Fist infiltrator too.

Well, at least the immediate threats to his life were over now, Cyrus thought as he counted the number of seating spaces available between the L-shaped bench and the back-less chairs

Seven in total between the six on the bench and the chair at the non-enclosed head of the narrow longtable. Which meant they needed two more to accommodate the good gnome and his wife. It would have been three but Jerrick was adamant in standing guard over his primary, even though that meant being the only one not sitting during dinner. He’d be standing on the other side of a sofa/bench back instead, which was tall enough to reach above his elbow meaning it was also higher than Eddard’s head.

Cyrus approved of his professionalism, even though that only seemed to further rile the man up for whatever reason.

“Hah!” Eddard suddenly gave a shaky bark of self-deprecating laughter and looked to where Cyrus stood across the table from him. His hands still shook around his otherwise untouched cup and he refused to meet the eyes of anyone else for some reason, barely managing to meet Cyrus’ eyes for that matter. “How faint of heart I must seem to you.”

“I forgive you,” the dwarf answered immediately. Honestly, the supposed embarrassment of his display didn’t compare to the kind of torment Cyrus’ existence had inflicted on his own Father for 20 years.

Eddard Silvershield stared at him, open-mouthed, then collapsed into helpless snickers that lasted for a good minute, occasionally gasping out “I forgive you, he says” before starting again.

Cyrus ignored a scandalized Jerrick, glanced meaningfully at his Father to take over and turned to look for the good proprietor, having sensed him climbing the stairs outside with wife in tow. Gorion was _far_ more practiced in interpersonal communications and had the authority of the experienced elderly besides, something which he more than proved over the next couple of minutes.

Eventually, the old wizard managed to coax the poor nobleman into some semblance of calm. “I believe there are sufficient extenuating circumstances,” Father said around Torrin, finally. “Betrayal can leave anyone shaken.”

“That’s not even…” The man said heavily after a deep steadying breath, before trailing off. He decided against actually saying anything more and finally took a sip of the hot roasted chicory, relishing the burn. Unambiguous pleasure shook his inner lights, such as they were. Everything was enhanced, brighter, for an instant, rather than the colours changing themselves. It was always an interesting effect to witness.

The young dwarf levitated two more seats over – _high-backed just to be safe_ – while the others talked, not commenting on the dark green nettled shame that flushed over Eddard’s spirit intermittently, alternating with surreal, astonished and occasionally scandalized amusement when the man bothered remembering that he was technically above their station. Supposedly.

It was of little import, Cyrus thought as he raised his hand in greeting to the two gnomes who finally returned from outside. Any pretenses would be quickly done away with once introductions were properly made.

Bentley glanced between his waitresses and ‘waitresses’ to make sure things were going as they should, then came over with his wife in tow. Gellanna Mirrorshade. Not quite as proactive and uncompromising as her husband but kind and good-aligned all the same. Her spirit was a mass of colourful rays and her mood a tightrope of _tired/glad/long-suffering_ after the ordeal of sorting out a caravan after a bandit attack. Not as bright or unassailably sane as her husband but then again no one else was that Cyrus had met.

Cyrus smiled at Bentley Mirrorshade and pulled out a seat for him to clamber on. The gnome gave him a mock glare but sighed and obligingly hopped on it, not commenting as Cyrus pushed the chair to its proper place at the table with him on it. He kept an admirably straight face while Cyrus repeated that feat with his wife too, pretending not to hear her gush over how charming he was, how it was such a crying shame that her husband beguiled such a strong, strapping lad before she got around to it and why was it that only youngsters seemed to know the proper way to treat a lady nowadays?

Bentley’s inner light wobbled and flared chaotically in nuances ranging from green-speckled _balking/envy/I’m-onto-you-woman_ to cherry-red embarrassment but he managed to keep most of it off his face.

“Amazing,” Cyrus said honestly, though it was the gnome’s wife he was watching. Because it had to be said. And because the next bit also had to be said, the dwarf turned from Gellanna Mirrorshade to Bentley Mirrorshade and gave him a nod of respect. “You were fortunate enough in your travels to run into the gnomish version of Imoen and wise enough to make her your wife. You should be proud of this achievement.”

Bentley groaned and dropped his head on the tabletop with a thunk as his wife preened, knowing praise when she heard it even if she hadn’t met Imoen yet. The gnome was just the right height for that display. “Now you’ve done it!” He said amidst varying reactions from everyone. “She’ll be insufferably smug for the rest of the day!”

“Don’t mind him, dearie,” Gellanna said blithely, patting her husband’s curly hair with one hand and Cyrus on the arm with the other as the dwarf stepped around the free chair to take a seat next to his Father on the bench. And the woman was still talking. “He’ll pretend otherwise till he’s blue in the face, mark my words, but he’s actually all chuffed over catching your eye,” she ignored her husband’s moan of despair, “But I reckon you should go easy on him, ‘specially in the beginning. He’s the best, kindest gnome you’ll ever run into, my husband, but his endurance isn’t what it used to be.”

“Dear!” Bentley gasped, shooting straight in his seat to gape at her in red-faced horror.

Fascinating, Cyrus thought. Imoen never managed to get this kind of reaction from anyone. At least not to this extent.

Mercifully for the good gnome, Khalid and Jaheira took that moment to join them, settling next to Khelben diagonally from where Cyrus himself had sat down. There was space for one more on their side of the bench, next to Bentley’s own chair, which Elminster would be taking whenever he decided to descend from their suite. In one or two minutes if the faint glimpses of self-light Cyrus made out through the two floors above were any indication.

Imoen emerged from the kitchens and came over first. “A greeting to you, unfed peons! It is I, your cook for the evening!” Eddard gaped at being called a peon, Jerrick glared/boggled at her brazen proclamation and Bentley did a fair impression of a man too tired of anything and everything to react to life’s latest boot to the head. Everyone else was either too used to her (Cyrus, Khelben and Gorion) or too used to taking their cues from one or more of the others (Khalid and Jaheira). Well, except Gellanna but the obvious explanation for that had already been stated. “Normally I would express my displeasure over the number of guests increasing so unexpectedly on this auspicious occasion!” That earned odd stares from the few who didn’t know she was technically doing this as a belated birthday celebration but she plowed on, as she always did. “But since I am merciful and this _is_ going to be the debut for the greatest and most savorous delicacy this world has ever seen, I shall tolerate the new additions.” She gave Eddard, Torrin and Jerrick the hairy eyeball. “However, since this _does_ mean that my greatest creation will have to be divided into smaller portions, to truly sate your hunger you shall all have to subject yourselves to the lacklustre experience of a soup bowl first.”

Bentley looked like he was ready to burst into outrage over any experience provided by his inn being termed _lacklustre_ but decided it wasn’t worth the bother.

The ‘waitress’ left and made way for a waitress to set down the large porcelain bowl of soup she had brought from the kitchen in Imoen’s wake. The scent of beef and spices made everyone visibly perk up and even Bentley was able to set aside some of his exhaustion, mental and physical both, when it wasn’t just his stomach that growled.

Cyrus’ didn’t, which was strange in his opinion because he hadn’t eaten anything since the evening before. And the aroma was doing strange things to his mood now that he had an actual emotional range.

Glancing up when he noticed Elminster moving out of their suite – _no doubt alerted by the clairvoyance magical sensor hovering just behind them on the wall_ – the dwarf exchanged a look with his father who just nodded slightly for him to go ahead. Something warmed his chest for a moment at his father stepping back in favour of him so easily, though it was tempered by uncertainty over _why_. Feelings didn't perfectly translate into thoughts and reasoning. Still, Cyrus stood from his seat – _just on the edge, next to Imoen’s chair, for easy exit and movement_ – and gestured for attention. “Since almost all of us are here and the last of our party is coming down as we speak, perhaps we should all finally make proper introductions? The events of the day have been rather hectic and prevented such from being properly done.” When everyone agreed he addressed Eddard Silvershield and started gesturing to everyone in turn as they took turns filling their respective bowls. Cyrus filled one and levitated it over to Jerrick as he spoke, pretending not to notice the guard wait for him or someone else to eat before doing the same. “Gorion and myself are already known to everyone here, for better or worse, and Torrin Ironstar has since made his own introductions as well. That said. Eddard Silvershield, son of Duke Entar Silvershield of Baldur’s Gate, be known to Imoen the Magnificent of Candlekeep, Bard and author extraordinaire.” This required an edited tangent into how that moniker had come to pass, what book she’d written, whether or not it had been published and questions along the lines of “Wait, you’re really the author of Calimshan Nights?” Because the book was already well known in in Waterdeep, Calimport and Cormyr, among other places, which all used it for both recreation and as means to study foreign cultures, customs, tactics and strategies, as it happened.

“Ha!” Imoen gloated from her chair at the head of the table. It had been left to her so she could easily rise and make trips to the kitchen if needed, as she _was_ technically the cook even though Hilda had shooed her off with reassurances that she’d take it from there. The young woman pointed her spoon at Cyrus. “I became famous before you did!”

Ignoring that with the benefit of long practice, the dwarf gestured to the gnomes next. “The good proprietor and his wife you already know of course.” Then to the half-elven Harpers. “Next we have the druid Jaheira and her husband, the warrior Khalid, both old adventuring friends of my Father. I am afraid I do not know them much better than I do total strangers.” Which was to say he only knew their souls and every kill they’d ever inflicted and how and why, as well as the murders attempted against _them_ and how, plus the way _peace_ and threats to it hovered around them, but that made his statement no less true.

“S-something t-th-that sh-should be r-remedied with all d-due haste,” Khalid stuttered. Cyrus looked at his soul and mind intently for a few moments. The tic seemed to be owed to trauma both physical and not. Restoration and constant verbal practice to regain proper diction? A matter to be pursued later he supposed, especially since Jaheira picked up the thread of discussion next.

“Indeed, as we knew of you enough to recognize you on sight even had you been without your present company,” the woman told the dwarf. Her accent was Tethyrean. No surprise, since she hailed from there – _flashes of attackers leaving her orphaned after killing her noble family_ – and she was also the more assertive of the two as well. “I recognize you from Gorion’s letters, for he writes of you often. Gorion often said that he worried for your safety, even at the expense of his own.” Which still hadn’t changed, much to Cyrus’ growing consternation. “He also wished that Khalid and I would become your guardians if he should ever meet an untimely end. It is why we lingered here as long as we did, rather than departing for Nashkel days ago as we originally planned. It gladdens me that the worst did not come to pass.” After a look filled with understated emotion and meaning sent Gorion’s way, the woman addressed Eddard next. “Khalid and I look into local concerns, and there are rumours of strange things happening at the mines. We are to meet the mayor of the town, Berrun Ghastkill to investigate what is most likely the cause behind the bad iron. Perhaps you will be able to provide some insight, given that your caravan comes from there? Any information you can provide is bound to be of aid in our task.”

“Everything I know I will share gladly,” Eddard agreed.

Taking that as his cue, Cyrus finished introduction. “And finally, my teacher in matters arcane.” The dwarf gestured between Eddard and the human – _really half-elf_ – in question. “Beside you sits Khelben “Blackstaff” Arunsun, master Archmage of Waterdeep.”

Jerrick dropped his soup bowl.

Cyrus didn’t pay it much attention save to note the failure of the clay container to even crack – _durability spells?_ – being more interested in how Eddard Silvershield’s soul light suddenly seemed to wink out nearly completely, then burst in stark yellow as his face went chalk-white. “I beg your pardon?” He squeaked, arms halting in the process of taking the ladle from said Archmage’s grasp. “Khelben Arunsun? Master Archmage and Open lord of Waterdeep Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun!?”

Khelben was much more amused on the inside than out, prodding the young man to take possession of the ladle he was holding out. “I am afraid your information is somewhat out of date. I have since resigned that position.” Only to immediately rejoin the ranks of the Masked Lords at their insistence, lest the power shift cause a severe disturbance to Waterdeep’s peace. “I am not here on any official business. Only for the sake of the Little Prince and to deliver a package to my friend here.” He looked at Gorion. “I have it in a Bag of Holding upstairs.” Which probably meant he intended to leave the bag with them as well, since he had all the storage space he needed as part of his robe.

Eddard was mouthing ‘little prince’ and looking wide-eyed between Khelben and his self-declared student in matters arcane. No one seemed interested in Jerrick’s muffled curses as he tried to clean up after himself.

Cyrus filled another bowl of soup and floated it over to sit on the top edge of the bench rest for the guard to eat. It was wide enough for it – _prestidigitation to glue the bowl bottom to the wood, slightly_ – but better safe than sorry. That broke the frozen silence that had descended after Eddard Silvershield’s unfortunate reaction to suddenly realizing what company he was in.

Which was when the other Archmage finally reached their table.

Cyrus gave him a long look. He was wearing his _disguise_ , though how the man expected to fool anyone with just an inverted colour scheme while going by a name like ‘Terminsel’ Cyrus couldn’t understand. Bentley had certainly seen through it, though he’d humoured the ancient Sage all the same even when Khelben didn’t bother with disguises. Or, well, Cyrus could understand the idea from an intellectual standpoint since not everyone was as capable as he was at instantly thinking up every possible anagram when hearing the names of others. Or places. Or next week’s failed attempt on Hull’s part at sewing famous people’s faces on his wash cloths. His self-appointed older brother – _You need a sane, stabilizing influence in your life before exposure to Imoen does irreparable damage and I don’t trust anyone else with you!_ – had a thing for giving random titles to this and that, which was probably Imoen’s fault as most everything in Cyrus’ life was that didn’t come directly from Bhaal.

Unfortunately for the ancient man, while Cyrus had agreed to hold the matter of his letter to Gorion separate from everything else, that did not mean he was ready or willing to let it go.

Making his decision – _prestidigitation to write a tiny message on the surface of Gorion’s eye_ – the dwarf waited for his father to put up the one-way silencing ward he’d requested before turning to Eddard Silvershield again and gesturing in the direction of their august gathering’s final member. “Eddard Silvershield, son of Entar Silvershield, Grand Duke of Baldur’s Gate. Be known to Elminster Aumar, Sage of Shadowdale.” Stunned silence. “He suddenly showed up a few days ago and didn’t go away.”

The groans (Bentley), snickers (Imoen), giggles (Gellanna), snorts (Khelben, amusingly) and sounds of “Child!” or “Young man!” (Jaheira and Elminster, respectively) and variations thereof were lost in the disaster of Jerrick knocking his second soup bowl with his elbow which, in spite of the magically-conjured glue on the bottom, upended it right on Eddard’s head.

“-.  .-“

There were lots of things to be said about hindsight. It enabled recognition of the realities, possibilities, or requirements of a situation, event, decision etc. after their occurrence. Hindsight was defined as the ability to understand, after something has happened, what should have been done or what caused the event. For Cyrus, though, a new meaning was becoming apparent, namely the recognition of what had _not_ happened before due to his inability to muster any real emotion for any action or reaction. What had not happened but would be happening from now on with regularity.

He’d never actually _savoured food_.

“-estly, you would think this _wasn’t_ as if my son had never said a lie in his life,” Gorion was saying in reply to Elminster as Khelben finished cleaning Eddard up. Being a Transmutation cantrip, Gorion couldn’t use Prestidigitation himself to do it, sadly.

“That is hardly relevant! Forsooth, thou canst be thus unbothered by his total disregard for the better part of valour!” The Sage grumbled. Rather peevishly too, but even so his words barely made it to Cyrus’ active attention despite his perfect memory recording them word for word, tone for tone, emotion light by emotion light straight from his soul. “Honestly, for all that thou and Khelben taught him everything from hedge trimming to warping reality with his mind, could thou not have put at least _some_ effort into teaching him at least a semblance of discretion?”

“Oh he knows more than a mere semblance. He just chose not to use it in this particular instance,” Father said serenely, eyes not lifting from his own food, something Cyrus only made note of because of his proximity rather than anything else. The dwarf couldn’t find it in himself to look at anything other than his food either. “Honestly, he never lied for _me_. Did you expect him to lie for you?”

Ouch. Well, no punches were being pulled on either side it seemed.

That particular ‘talk’ went on for another couple of minutes but Cyrus still didn’t pay much attention, preoccupied as he was with his slow and methodical soup intake. He’d made sure to assess the best speed in order to maximize the length of time he could maintain the constant flavour on his tongue. As well as while the food went down, since the better half of taste was actually thanks to the deeper recesses of the nose, not that many people bothered learning about that.

“Well, he seems to appreciate proper food at least,” Elminster grumped at him from across the table before turning to Bentley Mirroshade. “My compliments to old Hilda, as always.”

“Ha!” Imoen scoffed from next to Cyrus. “Wait till you get a taste of _my_ masterpiece. This is nothing!”

“The problematic thing is that I believe you,” Khelben said dryly. “Which leaves me rather concerned for whatever outcome that might inflict on the Little Prince over there. He seems barely capable of coping with things as it is.” The man shook his head, though Cyrus only saw that from the way his inner lights played over his form, as he still hadn’t looked up from his soup bowl. “Mystra smite me if I know why, though.”

“Son,” Gorion said. It was barely enough to make the dwarf tear his eyes away from his current item of interest. “What are you feeling right now?”

Cyrus thought about that question over his latest spoonful. “I suppose I am rather worried about future poisoning attempts via ingestion against my person.”

“What?” Gorion blinked. “Why?”

“Because I do not trust my ability to detect foreign contaminants through the food flavours themselves. Or, worse, my ability to care even if I do detect them.” Another spoonful. Cyrus felt the flicker of irritation over having to pause between them to speak. He managed to repress it with some difficulty. “There seems to be a definite emotional component in taste and a person’s reaction to it. One much stronger than I had expected. I am, as a result, not in full possession of my senses at this time.” Twenty whole years of never enjoying food no matter how tasty, since he didn’t enjoy or care or feel anything about anything, and suddenly he could. It was like being fed water for the first time after dragging himself for a month through the desert.

He hadn’t seen this coming at all.

As he indulged in the latest spoonful of beef soup and blissfully ignored the odd looks and mixed-colour soul flares all around him, Cyrus Anwar ruefully pondered – _with but that little shred of coherent thought over there in the corner_ – the irony of having become the embodiment of the most common male stereotype. It seemed that for him the way to a man’s heart really _was_ through his stomach.

What a shameful display. Oh well. If Father managed to endure the torment he did for twenty years, the world would have to suffer him this.

That resolution firmly set in his mind, Cyrus Anwar nodded resolutely and resumed eating. Everyone else could entertain themselves for a while.

“The first thing in your life that makes you take leave of your senses above and beyond even that borderline display a few nights ago, and it’s a simple bowl of soup,” Father pondered aloud and brushed his son’s hair fondly for a few moments. Then he turned to the others. “Perhaps now is a good time for us all to get to know each other better? At least until my son deigns to rise from this odd fugue state of his and reveal why he decided to gather us all together, assuming there even is a reason beyond wanting company at this belated birthday celebration.”

“Birthday?” Eddard muttered to himself, looking at him in surprise.

“Such as providing an exposition for the Iron Crisis and associated troubles perhaps?” Elminster said dryly. “That _is_ what he claimed those many papers he produced last eve to be about.”

“I’m sure that, at least, can wait until we’ve had our fill of whatever supposed delicacy young Imoen means to inflict upon us,” Khelben answered.

“Supposed!?” Imoen bewailed from across the table.

Torrin laughed – _a low, rumbling thing despite his soft tenor_ – then seemed surprised at his outburst before answering Imoen’s inquisitive look. “Apologies. It is just that this scene is very similar to one I witnessed on multiple occasions in a tavern in Fallcrest.”

Fallcrest was a small settlement south and west of the Dalelands, based on the short question and answer session Elminster started with the dwarf over not being aware of any recent adventures in that particular region. Torrin clarified that he’d only witnessed similar antics but was in no way directly involved in them and did not linger in the town long so had no information to give the wizard. After that things segued into just how he’d come to be in the region if he truly hailed from the Great Rift.

“I am well aware of the reputation that the Gold Dwarves have acquired as overconfident, condescending and unconcerned with the world at large,” Torrin said mildly, before continuing more seriously. “More importantly, Moradin is aware. Particularly given the sharp contrast such a mindset makes next to the cynicism of those dwarves _not_ safely ensconced in the Great Rift. Cynicism and outright fatalism that has harmed the trust the clergy of Moradin and Berronar used to enjoy in centuries past. But that is not the reason I left Eartheart.”

“I imagine not,” Elminster said slowly. “Unless thy purpose is to act as a wandering missionary for those of thy people who already follow the ways of the Mordinsamman, which would be redundant.”

“I am indeed no missionary. Rather the opposite if you truly wish to assign me a specific role.” Torrin replied, idly rapping the table next to his bowl with his fingertips. “Moradin feels the dwarves of the Rift are overdue a reality check. However, the Rift _is_ the only remaining place in Faerun the dwarves can truly call their own, and the reluctance to venture out and settle anew elsewhere is not at all foundationless. Mithral Hall is a miracle among tragedies and even that was won through blood and tears. Prior to its resettlement 12 years ago, the only recent event involving a sizable dwarf population was the infiltration and capture of Llorkh in 1353.”

When the Zhentarim killed all the lords and brought in troops to slaughter the existing militia under false pretexts, prompting many of the 2,000 humans and all 300-some dwarves to leave en masse.

“I cannot imagine your only goal is to wander about, gathering tales of woe to take back to your people. That would more likely convince them to further isolate themselves,” Khelben said.

“Not entirely possible given the encroaching overpopulation in the Deep Realm caused by the births of the ever outgoing and adventurous Thunder Children,” Torrin smiled fondly at the thought of them, like a father would. Cyrus actually saw it now that the overwhelming experience of tasting his first delight was finally dissipating. Did he have one or more children left at home? He was certainly old enough that such could exist and have attained adulthood long ago. Something to ask him about later, since there was no soul to read due to that glass-like shroud covering him. “But you speak truly, that is not my goal traveling the world. Moradin judged it a better idea if one of the elderly, overly traditionalist members of the clergy were to go out in the world and visit other dwarven communities in turn, to learn of their opinions and customs, perhaps even heroic tales and histories that might crack the isolationist mindset that still defines Gold Dwarves as a whole.”

“Incidentally helping to dispel the idea of you and your fellow Forgesmiths as too set in your traditional ways and too slow to adapt to the changing world around you,” Gorion ventured.

“Quite so,” Torrin smiled at Father, though only briefly. “I can confidently say I am _very_ familiar with all dwarven settlements and communities worth mentioning. Alas, though I would love little more than to claim my observations and personal impact as unambiguously positive, the reality is rather more ambivalent.” He picked up the ale mug that one of the ‘waitresses’ had brought him at some point during his account. “And on that I will only advise that if any of you fine gentlemen and ladies ever go to Mirabar, do _not_ mention Mithral Hall to them in any context.” Torrin held out his mug in a short salute before taking a long sip, rather less boisterously than stories tended to depict his kinsmen, Cyrus thought. He would have to remember to ask about the story behind that particular piece of advice involving Mirabar. Whatever recent accounts had made it to Candlekeep from that far north were rather sparse and short. Also, rather incompatible with Cyrus’ older beliefs that dwarves did not assassinate or otherwise sabotage each other like human thieves and nobles.

Or drow.

“Mirabar?” Eddard spoke up, finally over most of the intimidation he’d fallen to since the introductions. “You’ve been that far north?”

“I suppose it does sound like a rather extended itinerary,” The Forgesmith mused, wiping the ale foam from his moustache with a napkin. More conscientious manners than most dwarves too, apparently.

“So what brought you to these parts?”

“Personal interests,” the priest answered simply. “It is true that traveling south on the way to the Wailing Dwarf could have been done more quickly by way of Elturel.” The Wailing Dwarf. A gigantic dwarven sculpture carved from the face of Mount Batyr and facing east toward Breakback Pass in the Giant’s Run Mountains of the Troll Mountains region. The hollow eyes and ears were said to catch winds that rush out the mouth, producing eerie moans that reverberate across the plains. It was a colossal feat of dwarven work, 4000 feet high and over 6,000 years old. Cyrus intended to see it himself one day.

“None of the expeditions which set out to reclaim that site were ever heard from again,” Elminster cautioned. The landmark doubled as the entrance to a dwarven city dating back to the days of Shannatar, only now infested with trolls and other monsters. “Four different adventuring companies tried to no avail.”

“Indeed,” Torrin nodded. “It would take thorough scouting, planning and an army to manage it. I may not be an army but I expect to manage one or both of the others. Not that I expect such an idea to be acted on, but my people have precious few options.” His mood turned sombre, for a moment. “Even with the Thunder Blessing and the Deep Realm thriving, the dwarves as a whole are diminishing.”

Because this or that monster, plot, tragedy or calamity kept killing them, Cyrus thought grimly, remembering his reading of the Rockfire accounts.

“So…” Eddard said cautiously. “You’ve come to the Baldur’s Gate region of the Sword Coast for… personal reasons.”

Torrin quirked a small half-smile at the man. “Less the Baldur’s Gate region, more The Wood of Sharp Teeth.” The priest leaned back with his hands folded on the tabletop. “I was thinking of investigating the tower of Durlag Trollkiller before moving on. I had planned to drop by Beregost first and perhaps look up the industrious dwarf who owns the caravan mercenary guard company but we all know what befell that particular plan.”

“I would apologize for keeping you from your itinerary but it would be a false claim,” the human said wryly. “Your aid was most needed and well-timed and for that I thank you.”

“No thanks needed. It is as it must be.” Cyrus almost thought he saw the glass-like veil concealing Torrn’s inner self sheen for a moment, letting him glimpse something like strength incarnate but paradoxically also confirming that the faint feeling he’d been getting from the priest since first seeing him was not just his imagination. “I have come to the conclusion that my visit would be as well-received as it would be useful. Which is to say, not at all.” Torrin sounded sad all of a sudden. “This ‘Kagain’ is doubtlessly one of Abbathor’s adherents, if the manner of his employees reflects on him to any extent.”

Bentley suddenly snorted, having just finished his soup. “You can be sure of that. I know I am.”

“So…” Imoen said slowly when the conversation stalled. “You’re basically on a quest to impress the masses, gather news and take back to your people new and awesome shinies.”

Torrin smiled warmly at her, though only just. All his expressions seemed understated or wan. As if he was only going through the motions, though Cyrus couldn’t be totally sure without seeing his soul, which he couldn’t. “I agree that my outlined reasons can be interpreted in that way.”

“Well I have just the thing!” she proclaimed before she begun to rummage through the side bag she never set aside on account of ‘bards are always prepared for the necessary, the interesting and, most importantly, the bizarre.’ What she brought out was definitely part of the third category, though she probably thought it was more the second. “I looted this off a pesky ogre the other day. For the right incentive I just _might_ be willing to donate-“

“Bless my eyes!” Gellanna Mirrorshade suddenly exclaimed. “If it isn't that twice-buckled belt, still going around like a social disease.”

A what?

 “… a ‘what’ disease?” Imoen asked in his stead.

“Oh Glittering Garl, not _that_ unholy thing again,” Bentley moaned dramatically.

“Hush, dear,” Gellanna absently told her husband before answering Imoen. “Don't you worry now, lass: us here at the Friendly Arm are very discreet. (Bless me, I thought I'd seen a lot on the long road, but setting up as the only healer in fifty miles, now _that_ opened my eyes...) You'll be wanting to experiment, no doubt. Nothing like the young ones for 'adventuring.'”

“Should I ask?” Eddard asked Khelben, momentarily forgetting who he was talking too.

“Depends. How up are you for adventuring?”

Resorting to stealthy innuendos against the younger generation now, honoured teacher? Truly, Imoen is a powerful influence on even you.

“Tell you what,” Gellanna was telling said young woman. “I'll sell you a bottle of me special curse-removing soap.”

“'Curse-removing soap'? That seems so useful,” Imoen exclaimed. “Why haven't I heard about it before?”

“It takes a fair while to concoct, my young friend, and if I mix it strong enough for the big stuff it'll take your skin off along with the curse. A little tarnish from that girdle is just fine, though. Now, that's a hundred gold per bottle.”

“A hundred gold! For soap!?”

Considering the cheapest soap went for 50 coppers and the fanciest for 1-3 gold at most, that was a pertinent question.

“That’s 90 for the soap itself and 10 for the box of preventatives and other bits you’ll be needing, dear.  The instruction booklets will explain everything, though you might want to have your friend’s father explain a few things if he hasn’t already.  Remember: safety starts with you.”

“Instruction booklets? I grew up in a library! I've already read all I need to about... _that_.”

What a fascinating example of haggling. Enough to offset the disappointment of having finished his food, thus ending his first flavorous experience.

Only Eddard Silvershield didn’t seem to share that opinion, looking both on the inside and outside as if he’d been smacked in the face with a live trout. He needed more worldly experience, that one, if this was enough to fluster him. Then again, considering just how early Cyrus was exposed to those truths, the twisted mockeries of them and what sorts of Candlekeep visitors he read them off, he wasn’t one to talk.

“Been browsing the _esoteric_ stacks, eh? Well, you'll learn the difference 'tween theory and practice soon enough. (Ah, the sweet days of youth and knowing everything...)”

“I don't have that much money on me,” Imoen said sadly, eyes turning wide and soulful. Like that kitten she’d tried to adopt just days after settling in Candlekeep only to make the mistake of bringing it within 3 meters of Cyrus at which point it hissed, spat and clawed deep gouges into her hands and forearms in its haste to run away faster than the wind, incidentally prompting Imoen to swear vengeance and eternal enmity against all housecats everywhere.

“Oh, stop looking at me with those puppy-dog eyes. I've been charmed and cozened by better than you, sweetie. Direct your thoughts to the purity of a Temple of healing and good works instead.”

Imoen brought her hands to her chin in prayer and her eyes turned even more soulful, if that was possible.

Gellana tried to hold out but, naturally, failed and sighed. “Oh fine. Just this once, then...”

Imoen whooped.

“I’ll have one bottle of curse-removing soap for you in the morning. That'll last you ten bath-times. And remember to wash behind your ears!”

“Aye ma’am! You can count on me!”

Bentley couldn’t hold it anymore and snorted. “Be careful around that one,” he told Torrin Ironstar. “She’s fond of using cucumbers in her deviances.”

The old dwarf blinked, eyebrows raised, while Eddard turned an odd mixture of red, blue and green, somehow. Choking on his last soup spoonful was only part of the reason, Cyrus was sure. The young dwarf was also rather surprised Jerrick wasn’t reacting openly, though the shame of having spilled his own soup all over his primary’s head was no doubt still in play.

“What he means,” Gorion intervened, his sense of humour warring with his sense of propriety and losing. Narrowly, but still. “Is that Imoen enjoys sneaking up on cats while they are busy eating to deposit cucumbers right behind them, sending them into a startled frenzy as soon as they turn around.” Odd looks from everyone save those familiar with her and Torrin himself. “I never bothered trying to learn precisely why. Likely something to do with their inability to perceive red and green.”

“Anyway!” Imoen spoke up, addressing Torrin again. “As I was saying, I _might_ be willing to donate this artefact to your cause for the right incentive.”

“As this is you pretending to make an advance at me for the sake of harmless amusement, I can perhaps endeavour to help you improve your bluffing technique for the right _incentive_ ,” the Forgesmith said mildly. “Such as you not trying to lead people on, particularly those who have been married for many times longer than you have been alive.”

“Oh poop,” Imoen huffed, storing her ‘artefact’ away. “You’re one of those non-senile old guys. Those are no fun at all.”

Says the person who threatened to eat Bhaal just that morning.

“Imoen,” Cyrus said, halting the conversation completely. “I love you.”

Hope gaped and the rainbow-like iridescence fluttered comically behind her eyes, much like it had done so long ago when he told her for the first time that she was magnificent.

And all around the both of them, sepulchral silence reigned.

“Right!” Imoen suddenly stood, raising a finger in the air dramatically and pointedly not looking at Cyrus or anyone else. “This can only be a sign that it is time for me to bring in the _true_ highlight of this evening, incidentally providing me with a reason to be… not here!” Then she turned around and marched across the common room like a Bard on a mission, disappearing behind the double doors where she proceeded to walk over to where Hilda’s favourite cat was eating, bend over and use prestidigitation to create a temporary cucumber which she carefully placed right behind the cat on the ground.

“Pfffahahaha!” It was at that point that, across Gorion and Torrin from him, Eddard Silvershield bent over in helpless laughter. “That (gasp) that’s… ahah… I can’t even find any words… ahahahah!” After half a minute or so he calmed down and addressed Cyrus properly. “Oh, my sister would have a fit if she were here to witness this. You just insulted all her sensibilities and trampled every idea of romance she has.”

Well, Cyrus supposed everyone released tension in their own way. He still watched his sister’s antics though, through the wall. Souls were visible that way. Even the pseudo-selves of animals without true will of self of their own.

Inside the kitchen, Hilda’s cat finished eating, turned around and saw the cucumber.

Then it jumped several feet in the air with a yowl, thus upending the stool its food bowl was under and making it fall on the cook’s toes much to her loud protests, and charged out of the kitchens fast as a catapult shot, knocking over two scullery whelps, tripping one of the waitresses and even knocking askew a chair which a reedy-looking half-elf was in the process of sitting in, leaving him to crash rear-first all over the floor with an undignified shriek.

There was only stunned silence as the cat finally reached the doors and made its bid for freedom.

Then, amidst the scattered but hearty guffaws of the many patrons, Bentley Mirrorshade released a soul-weary sigh, scratched his large nose as he often did when he was worried or stressed, then gave Cyrus the most earnest, most intense deadpan look he could muster. “You remember what I told you earlier about that sack of diamonds, lad? _I take it all back_.”

“-.  .-“

Chance and consequences could make for a very troublesome duo, Cyrus thought as _good/naïve/zealous_ entered the main Friendly Arm courtyard looking for him more or less the same moment that Imoen came out of the kitchen carrying the largest steel platter he had ever seen. Platter covered by the largest hemispherical lid he had ever seen. It was the perfect prelude to some sort of ruckus, he just knew it. The threads of _peace/not-peace/bravado_ wrapped around the newest arrival and his purpose shone so clearly from his soul – _scarlet/rainbow/gold denoting a self-imposed quest/investigation/one-man-crusade_ – that Cyrus could see him through the wall as clearly as he would face-to-face. Clearly enough to know he was one of those people who’d come to the Friendly Arm due to learning about the scene of many revelations of that morning.

The dwarf considered signalling his Father to put up another silencing ward like the one he’d temporarily raised earlier to keep Elminster’s identity to just their table, but decided it would be tempting fate. For all that he’d freed himself from gods and everything else running the universe in defiance of personal will and choice, he’d also cut himself off from luck, so life would possibly turn sour after this short time of levity no matter what he did. Taking the minor consequences of his honesty head-on at least meant they wouldn’t all pile on top of the worse ones later.

He hoped.

Besides, Imoen tended to be fairly conscientious when doing things on his behalf, so unless she pulled some scandalous stunt for whatever reason then-

“Behold!” She grandly proclaimed, setting the platter down and lifting the large lid with a flourish. “The wondrous dish known as Pie Imbued with Zestful Zazesspurian Adornments! The first in the world! But since I know the difficulty you plebeians have with long names – and how do dragons even stand that? – you may feel free to instead call it-“

“Amazing!” Elminster exclaimed, cutting her off with astonishment that was, for once, completely honest. “You have discovered pizza!”

“Nnnnoooooo!” Imoen wailed, falling to her knees right next to Cyrus. “Whyyyyyy!” She demanded of the universe in a tone so clear that it carried all the way to the courtyard through the open doors.

The _scarlet/rainbow/gold_ outside turned _scarlet/rainbow/yellow_ and broke into a run.

“Are my mind and goodwill truly destined to be forever subverted!?” Imoen cried, heedless of the smacked-with-wet-fish stares of everyone in the common room. “Art I bereft of true agency of my own? Shall each time I pursue a goal with but goodwill and love result in abasement at the whim of older men? What is left? Shall I also learn that my Calimshan Nights were a lie?”

“Actually-“ Elminster tried to say.

“No! NAY! I will not listen! I shan’t abide by this! I shall not!” Imoen turned on her knees to Cyrus, folded her arms over his thighs – _empowered prestidigitation to move and transmute the napkin into a pillow_ – and buried her face in his lap. “Oh woe. Oh WOE! Woe is me, that I shouldst be subjected by Fate to such abuse!”

Which was when _scarlet/rainbow/yellow_ knocked aside the two guards at the entrance rather than surrender his weapon per Friendly Arm rules, crashed through the double doors, stumbled to a halt and looked around, wild-eyed, until he zeroed in on the sight of Imoen with her face buried in the lap of a dwarf nearly entirely concealed behind the back rest of a bench, save for one hand that was on top of said young woman’s head.

One did not have to be a genius to know how that scene and Imoen’s words leading up to it could be misconstructed.

“What… what is the meaning of this!” yelled Ajantis Ilvastarr as the thoughts which had brought him here, the preconceptions derived from the story carried by North-bound travellers of the self-proclaimed Bhaalspawn, went from _suspicious/cautious/we-shall-see_ to _foul/outraged/enemy_. “Cease your… obscene depravities and unhand the fair maiden this instant you… you… KNAVE!”

The two doormen caught up and jumped the armoured and longsword-brandishing intruder only for the young would-be knight to bend forward and flip the first over his back – he crashed painfully on top of a table with enough force to crack it to pieces – and lay out the second with a punch to the temple moments later.

It was at that point that Bentley Mirrorshade’s inner light went from lime-coloured disbelief to red-angry _rage_ and slammed a palm against the tabletop hard enough to rattle everything on it. “That is it! I have had it!” The gnome half jumped, half pushed out of his chair violently enough to send it crashing backwards on the floor and stormed over to the bewildered squire. “I've just about had my FILL of nosy, prowling, rumor mongering, insult throwing, pun hurling, iron mongering, smart arsed fools, freaks, assassins, zealots and felons that continually test my will, mettle, intelligence, and most of all, patience!”

The Friendly Arm patrons reeled in the face of that outburst, open-mouthed and otherwise expressing one part disbelief and two parts fascination and resolve to visit again as soon as possible if this was the sort of entertainment they could look forward to.

 “I…” Ajantis faltered, but then rallied and held out his sword, tip-first, to Cyrus the moment he stood up. “I apologize good innkeeper, but duty demands that-“

“That nothing!” Bentley yelled with a sharp gesture that had one of his ‘waitresses’ grab the squire by the wrist with enough strength to make him gasp in pain and drop his weapon. “My inn is open only to those who behave themselves! If you’ve got the gold for the damages to my mood, my ears, my men, my customers and my FURNITURE, then you’d better let me hear it pretty damn quick and grovel out an apology besides, or so help me I'm going to take a large blunt object roughly the size of Elminster AND his hat, and stuff it lengthwise into a crevice of your being so seldom seen that even the denizens of the nine hells themselves wouldn't touch it with a twenty-foot rusty halberd! Have I MADE myself perfectly CLEAR?!”

As he moved Imoen aside by the scruff and stood to approach the good gnome, Cyrus figured it was probably best not to mention to him the future increase in patronage and its cause just yet.

“But but…” Ajantis helplessly tried to utter something or other but his inner self had been well and truly rattled. “I am bound by honor! The lady… I do not understand!”

“Clearly!” Bentley sneered as a second ‘waitress’ grabbed the not-quite-knight by the arms from behind and lifted him off the floor. The sudden drop of the illusion that revealed the two ‘waitresses’ for the 7-foot-tall iron golems they truly were abruptly silenced every single snicker, comment and murmur in the entire hall. “Well maybe some time with the pigs will help fix that and make you learn some bloody prudence, tact and the meaning of _not sticking your self-righteous nose into other people’s business!_ ”

Cyrus placed a hand on Bentley’s shoulder. “Good gnome-”

“No!” said gnome rounded on him, finger pointed at his face. “I won’t have it!” Whatever ‘it’ was. “And since we’re on the subject, I’ve had it with you assuming responsibility for things you had no hand in!”

“On which I completely agree.” That took some of the wind out of Bentley’s sails.

Technically, if not for this morning’s scene with the assassin mage, Ajantis would have just stuck around the Ankheg hunting grounds for at least a few more days, but alas the news of a Bhaalspawn reached him with sufficient time to let him make the trip over by evening. And, well, Ajantis fully intended to kill him as way of avenging Imoen’s ‘dishonour’ for a short while there, which was enough for Cyrus to read everything leading up to this confrontation off of him.

But that wasn’t what Bentley needed to hear. “Which is why we should let this situation be sorted out by the one truly responsible for this misunderstanding.” That said, Cyrus Anwar walked over to the trapped Paladin of Helm, peered to make sure the golem’s grips weren’t _too_ tight – _they weren’t, the squire’s spaulders were made of good iron_ – and yanked the human free quicker than the constructs could react, after which he proceeded to drag the protesting man by the collar all the way around the table where he shoved him at Elminster hard enough to nearly make him fall on top of the mage. “This is your fault.”

Then he turned around, ignored the scandalized glare Elminster was sending him and the varied stares and gapes of everyone else, sat back in his seat, served himself a slice of Pie Imbued with Zestful Zazesspurian Adornments, took a small bite just to see what he was getting himself into and found himself abruptly distracted.

Ten minutes and two more slices later, Cyrus Anwar pondered the realization that he _knew_ , now. The truth. Thousands upon thousands of years of multi-racial conflict, advancements, divine guidance and random evolution had come together to create this exquisiteness in front of him. That’s it. It’s over. Everyone can go home now[.](https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/posts/7132371/)

But of course his peerless mind could not just leave it at that. No, happiness would be denied to him once again, for he also knew it was inevitable that the concept of Pie Imbued with Zestful Zazesspurian Adornments would be copied and recopied by all and sundry, degrading over time until all that glittered was no more and nothing remained of this wondrous, tasty goodness besides the shape. And those partaking of those sad imitations would never know what they were truly missing for none in that dismal, far future would be able to equal the original. The wonder which was rapidly disappearing from his sight as he looked on.

Well.

At least he could be reasonably sure no other meals would measure up or exceed in flavour the one he’d just had, so he _probably_ wouldn’t take leave of his senses like this again, which was good he guessed?

Diagonally across the table from him, Ajantis Ilvastarr was quietly eating his own – tiny – slice of Pie Imbued with Zestful Zazesspurian Adornments under the gimlet stare of Imoen, Gorion, Khelben and Jaheria, surprisingly. Elminster had decided it was the most expedient way to ‘keep an eye on him’ and Gellanna had persuaded her husband to allow it and just swap seats with her if he didn’t want to be in too close proximity. Which meant she was able to grill all the pertinent details of his situation and reaction to the misunderstanding out of him, dispelling some of the tension in the atmosphere.

The discussion turned from there into a general brainstorming session about what everyone knew of the region’s troubles, how it was very likely that the iron crisis and bandit activity were connected, and the likely artificial nature of the unnatural plague affecting the Nashkel mine ore as reported by Eddard Silvershield (Ajantis had very nearly fainted upon hearing everyone introduce themselves). The talk then segued into what they planned to do about it, why they planned to do anything about it, and what a coincidence it was that Ajantis’ goal was the same as theirs so maybe he wasn’t completely hopeless, Bentley grudgingly admitted. Even though he _was_ just a squire and was looking to profit off the region’s troubles, to which Ajantis protested that his cause was just and he only meant to be recognized as a knight, which Bentley scornfully told him was the same thing.

Having his mood buoyed by Imoen’s admittedly exquisite creation certainly didn’t make the good gnome retract his claws any. Not that he lacked a point: people who wanted to be heroes automatically wanted people to be in danger so they could save them. It was much more worthwhile and unambiguously good to want people _safe_. And Ajantis did seem prone to jumping to conclusions and see evil and danger everywhere.

Much like Khelben used to be, ironically enough.

“Right then,” said Archmage finally said when the meal seemed to be coming to a close. “Little Prince, since you appear to have finally rejoined us, again, perhaps you could make your no doubt valuable contribution to this discussion?”

Already time for another session of ‘volunteering information’ then.

“Or,” Elminster cut in, still sour over being ‘given the task of wrangling baby adventurers, of all things’ in his own words, “perhaps thou should just bring out that voluminous stack of papers he provided thee last eve.” Not that his mood stopped him from delighting in Imoen’s creation. “In any event, seeing as the act of ‘not going away’ and instead staying to help resolve _certain matters_ prevented me from making my own investigations, I would very much like to know that information! So, lad, if you don’t mind?”

Okay then.

“The iron crisis is an operation set in motion by the Sembian merchant organisation known as the Iron Throne,” Cyrus said absently as he nibbled on his last slice and waited for Khelben’s hastily erected silencing ward. “The Iron Throne aims to gain financial and political influence in Baldur’s Gate after being barred from expanding into Cormyr,” he motioned at Elminster with his slice. “You had a hand in that of course. Regardless, being refused in Cormyr means that Rieltar Anchev’s plans for expansion in the Sword Coast got the support he’d been requesting for years. The first of three strategies is the ongoing poisoning of the ore in the Nashkel iron mines with an alchemical corrosive created by the mage Davaeron and applied to the ore by a small army of kobolds under the command of a half-orc priest of Cyric by the name of Mulahey.” He gestured at Khalid and Kaheira who were looking at him very strangely already. With mouths at the very least slightly ajar too. “They are the reason for the dead miners being reported out of the mines, something that was never supposed to happen since Mulahey had been ordered to utilize stealth and discretion in his activities.”

Incredulity and wide-eyed astonishment seemed to be turning into the rule of the day. Khelben seemed to be getting more _amused/resigned/exasperated_ by the second as Ajantis grew more and more shocked at the sort of situation he’d landed in. He certainly hadn’t expected anything like this when he woke up that morning. Torrin was the only one not giving off any readable signals.

“The second part of the operation consists of strategic bandit raids on the caravans of good iron that do get through the region, as well as widespread, smaller attacks against individuals and groups to rob them of any personal possessions made of that same material. The Black Talon and Chill mercenary companies, consisting of humans and goblinoids, respectively, are the ones carrying out these raids out of their hidden camp in the Wood of Sharp Teeth, headed by the half-ogre named Tazok.”

Stunned silence. Clearly, no none had expected him to actually have so much to say, or such thorough detail. At all.

“Rendering the region’s supply of iron thus compromised means the Iron Throne is in the position to sweep in and ‘save’ the region by revealing that they just happen to possess a supply of uncontaminated iron, thus the third part of their strategy: running their own, secret mine in the depths of the Cloakwood forest.” The quiet only seemed to stretch on so Cyrus decided to provide what further elaboration he could. “These last activities haven’t been discovered because The Iron Throne has been using the ‘presumed dead’ victims of caravan raids as slave labour while shipments of ore were done via Bags of Holding by a mage called Tranzig, who also acts as liaison between Tazok and Mulahey.” The assembled personages scowled or glared at the mention of slavery but otherwise didn’t seem to know what to say to that. “Tranzig generally stops at Feldepost’s inn every other week or so.”

By this point even Elminster was looking at him in total astonishment, glowing inside with a bizarre mix of _amusement/incredulity/maybe-it’s-not-them-but-the-world-we-should-be-sheltering_.

“Khalid and Jaheira are already going to Nashkel so that solves one problem,” he looked at his little sister next. “You’ll be going along with them.”

“What? Why?”

“Because no offense but you’re not ready for either of the other two,” at her pout, he sweetened the deal. “And since he’s not all that experienced himself, I’m sure Ajantis will consent to become your first minion.”

“I beg your pardon!”

“If he knows what’s best for him,” Cyrus glared at the man, bringing him short. “Or must I spell out the insult to _my_ honour you committed when you made that accusation against my person earlier?”

Ajantis shut up and averted his eyes.

“Well minions _are_ always good,” Imoen said, glaring at the would-be knight dubiously. “As long as he doesn’t assume I’m a slattern again.”

“I did not!”

“But I’m still not convinced.”

Cyrus went in for the kill. “Also, according to one of the caravan merchants outside, Nashkel is where Volo happens to be at the moment.”

“SOLD!”

That settled, he spoke again to the gathering at large. “While a druid would no doubt be invaluable in the forest, waiting to take out the Cloakwood operation is less than ideal. Fortunately, Father and I are not without means of our own.” He nodded to Torrin Ironstar. “You’ll be accompanying us of course.”

“Will I now?” The priest asked. Of everyone, he was the one who’d weathered the many revelations with the most aplomb, more so than even Khelben himself. At least on the outside.

“The Cloakwood mines are actually the old home of the dwarven Clan Orothiar, who died nearly to a man when they struck an underground river and flooded the tunnels. One of the survivors had the ill fortune of befriending Rieltar Anchev only for the latter to torture the location out of him and appropriate it to his own ends.” Cyruus met the now priest’s eyes seriously. “The dwarf in question is currently being held captive in his own home.”

“… I see.” Torrin said grimly, something profoundly menacing flashing in his eyes for a moment before his feelings were once again hidden. He sighed and gave Cyrus a faintly amused, nearly fond look. “Do you generally draft people towards this or that goal within hours of your acquaintance?”

Cyrus thought back to Tethtoril turning into his advocate in Candlekeep, Parda and Karan taking it on themselves to supplement Gorion’s own tutoring, and the change Khelben underwent from wanting to kill him to teaching him magic and, later, all but declaring his loyalty to him. All while he was still a child. Then he thought to how the Watchers someone became his bodyguards… for some reason. Then to more recent events, like being accosted by Elminster on the road only to effectively recruit the man towards the goal of resolving _certain matters_. At the expense of investigations the old wizard would have otherwise carried out apparently. And after kicking him to the ground even. The answer was fairly clear really. “So far, that seems to be the case.”

“Wait a second!” Imoen balked. “You mean you’re not coming with me south?

“Now Imoen, Father and I are the only ones left to look into the issue of the Cloakwood mines themselves. Taking out both operations at once should cause the bandits to retreat to their camp in the woods, allowing us to take out that particular problem in one fell swoop. Especially if we manage to get armed support from the city itself.”

“But that’s terrible! And what about never splitting the party!?”

“Are you sure you’re one to talk about proper travel parties?” Cyrus replied. “You’re basically an add-on yourself. Or did you forget you were never supposed to leave Candlekeep at all?”

“Ooh! So cruel!

“Now wait just a damned minute!” Eddard Silvershield burst, unable to take the deluge of information anymore. “This is not a joking matter! You’re talking about planned sabotaje, planned chains of assassination and region-wide murders and you act as if it is a joking matter? Have you no shame? And how do you even know all this!?”

“I always know if, how and why someone has killed someone as soon as I lay eyes on them, as well as when someone wants to kill someone and how they plan to do it and why.” He returned the nobleman’s glare with one of his own. “In _extreme detail_.” Eddard backed off and broke eye contact first. Good. Point made then. “It’s how I knew what and how to do about your traitorous Flaming Fist bodyguard outside.” Eddard looked like he would have replied something but instead shut his mouth and sagged back in his seat, losing some of his colour and giving Cyrus a much more uncertain look than ever. “It just so happens that Rieltar Anchev’s foster son, Sarevok, ambushed myself and Father a few nights ago with the intent of killing the two of us. That is how I know all this.” He drunk a bit of wine to wash down the last of his ‘pie.’ “Of course, none of what I just exposited accounts for the Flaming Fist infiltrations, the assassinations being planned against your father and the other Grand Dukes, or the recently begun, gradual replacement of key personages and competing trading rosters in Baldur’s Gate city via doppelgangers.” Eddard choked on his wine. “These are all part of Sarevok’s own, independent plan to subvert his foster father’s operations towards his own ends, namely to kill and replace said father and use the popularity provided by solving the iron crisis as a ramp to become Grand Duke himself once at least one of the others has been removed. From which point he will fan the flames of discontent between Baldur’s Gate and Amn until outright war breaks out.”

“WHAT!?” Eddard shouted, launching to his feet and attracting the attention of the inn’s other patrons despite the silencing ward.

Noticing that, Duke’s son sat back down but his outrage and distress was clear in his glare.

“It sounds completely mad and pointless, I know, but then again Sarevok Anchev _is_ a Bhaalspawn.” That statement had the predictable effect on everyone. “He expects that death on a large enough scale will cause him to ascend. Granted, going out himself to hunt down the rest of us Bhaal children did not figure in his original designs, or he’d have tried something against me years ago when he visited Candlekeep and realised what I was.” His face and Gorion’s effective observations of Sarevok and his investigations into Alaundo’s prophecy were among the many things Bhaal had made Cyrus forget. “But then again, it wasn’t until two years back that he learned others had designs for the Throne of Bhaal” This seemed to alarm Khelben and Elminster more than anything he’d said so far. “Sarevok always planned to be the last but had been content to wait until his plan for war bore fruit before going on a proper manhunt. He expected he still had time since Alaundo’s words clearly state there can be only one Bhaalspawn to ascend. Unfortunately for him, the Bhaalspawn prophesy actually began to move in the year 1366.” This seemed to seriously leave all the Harpers at the table shaken. “Sarevok was approached by a woman in disguise in an attempt to recruit all the most powerful Bhaalspawn she could find and have that handful of them band together to force the prophecy into motion on the assurance that they would get to ascend alongside Bhaal himself, but that is a less urgent matter.”

The gaping, shocked reactions his closing speech garnered were a fairly heavy burden even for him, Cyrus felt. Bentley and Gellanna had long since stopped doing anything but stare, wide-eyed. Their inner lights had dimmed under the onslaught of dread and outrage in equal doses. Eddard was even worse off, pale and shaky, fearing for his father’s live, his men’s life, his own life and the fate of the region as a whole. The part about Bhaalspawn was still waiting to impact him, his composure had been that badly affected, and Jerrick was not far off. Khalid and Jaheira handled this eminently in comparison, with only Khelben being more composed, on the outside at least. Inside he was more worried and angry over the disaster Cyrus had landed in than everyone but Torrin (who looked like nothing _could_ shake his composure if he didn’t want it to), Imoen (who never doubted Cyrus anyway) and the dwarf’s own Father.

His Father who studied Elminster’s dumbfounded expression, leaned back in his seat, put one arm around his son and used the other to bring a cup of tea to his mouth, trying and failing to hide his wide smile of complete and utter, smug vindication. “That’s my boy.”

Elminster Aumar groaned and slumped back in his seat with as much dramatic flair as Khelben had used that morning, all of it just as genuine. “Less urgent! Less urgent he says!” He proceeded to glare at Cyrus as even his antiquated accent seemed to flee from his wrath. “I think at this point your opinions on what can be considered _relevant_ or _urgent matters_ is questionable at best! What next? Shall I learn that at some point you have also stumbled upon personal secrets we do not know ourselves?”

Cyrus blinked, opened his mouth, closed it, used prestidigitation to perform a very specific conjuration whose result he handed to his Father to decide what to do with. His Father, who took one look at it, looked for a moment like his eyes would pop out of his skull and proceeded to quickly fold and pass to Elminster Aumar the note which read: _Rather than returning to Shadowdale, you should instead accompany Khelben to Waterdeep so you can start searching for your daughter as soon as possible._

“My WHAT!?”


	18. Appropriation

Elminster enraged.

It was not a situation conductive to merriment or any other sort of easy feeling. Even without Cyrus’ ability to see the soul of beings and witness the scope of the man’s lividness as it erupted from him into a blaze, everyone at the table became instantly aware that dinner had come to a close. Despite not seeing or otherwise perceiving it beyond the wizard’s first shout, the gathered people certainly reacted on some level to the wizard’s feelings igniting from spark all the way into a stellar mass of _red/hot/white_ with a radius easily wide enough to suffuse the whole common room, as well as the floors immediately above and below.

Emotions which smouldered with something else, something like Silver Fire.

It was only lifelong practice with picking out Imoen’s more subtle feelings and intent that allowed Cyrus to actually perceive Elminster’s conflicted feelings of confusion and hurt, as well as the nascent disbelief which nevertheless faded quickly – _long habit of taking Khelben at his word, exclusionary detailing aside, even if it meant accepting Cyrus’ apparent ability to see the truth in people in defiance of measures like Mind Blank?_ – even before the Archmage held the note out to Khelben, asking only “What say you to this?” in a menacingly low tone not aimed at anyone.

The way Khelben’s face lost a shade and his eyes briefly closed in something only just short of pain only made Elminster become grimmer and his gaze colder than it had already become, sharply contrasting with the way his actual emotions felt to those who could see and feel them as they were. The gathering broke out fairly swiftly after that with a final agreement to meet again in the morning, after which Cyrus’ guests either went off to work, pray, clean up after themselves, get some rest and, in the case of an ashamed Ajantis Ilvastarr, departed for the stables outside where he would groom his horse and sleep the night away in the hay in order to absolve himself of at least some of the shame of his appalling and rash display of earlier.

He’d even managed to state that in a contrite, dignified manner that did not come across as awkward or laughable, but Cyrus had no doubt that any potential amusement would have fallen flat even if that had not been the case.

Soon after, the three human mages with dwarf in tow – Imoen had been ‘persuaded’ by Bentley Mirroshade with Gorion’s backing to set about working off the damage his cat caused when she played her trick on it – returned to their suite whereupon Elminster strode to the far side of the main room, turned around and regarded first Cyrus then Khelben coldly. “The normal and sane thing to do would be to disbelieve the contents of that very short note, but since that will no doubt do little but waste time let us instead go straight to the explanation. Because lad? Khelben?” Elminster glared and stooped forward, grip tight on his normal-seeming staff. “I want my explanation.”

Cyrus opened his mouth to speak, then closed it when Khelben laid a hand on his shoulder and looked down at him searchingly. “You hold that you know when and how death has happened, or how it will be done by others and why. How does your… discovery of this figure into that?”

Did I sense what I sensed because Elminster’s daughter was going to die?

Elminster’s outrage suddenly flashed with alarm so Cyrus answered immediately. “No way that I can discern. Knowing death has nothing to do with me discovering this. It was just something I perceived after I gained mastery of my full self last night, during a few short moments when my… perspective expanded in ways I did not appreciate.” He paused, unsure, but found words for the rest soon enough. “It made me decide to turn most of my power inwards towards the purpose of self-control and defence, as I’ve already told you. But not before I perceived enough to know that this was a matter that would lead to a more severe blow if left as it was.” He turned to Elminster then. “A blow to you and everything you live for, I mean. That is all I know of this.”

Some tension, though not nearly all of it, seemed to leech of Khelben as he briefly closed his eyes, but it was just replaced by one of a different sort as the man faced his fellow Chosen. “Then I believe it falls to me to explain everything.”

He did just that. Spoke clearly and succinctly of being approached just short of two decades ago by a certain song dragon lover of Elminster going at the time by the name of Maerjanthra Shalace. She wanted help with a spell or potion that would enable her to conceive a child with Elminster despite his conscious control of his fertility. Said Archmage seemed ready to bite out something due to sheer outrage at that point, but Khelben made no secret of refusing her request only for Mystra to intervene and outright order him to do as she asked, as well as to keep it a secret from Elminster besides.

Elminster’s inner self was a total mess of conflicting emotions for a while after that, one that could have led to any number of different reactions and situations. But then the mass of _white/hot/fury_ interwoven with _yellow/grey/gnarled_ worry and already coherent echoes of aims and search plans suddenly staggered the man on the inside when feeling of betrayal felt towards his old lover briefly evolved into feeling betrayed by Mystra herself.

All the lines of **death** criss-crossing Elminster’s form suddenly faded, disappeared behind a crown of seven stars that was paradoxically far behind the man yet all around him at the same time.

Elminster shut his eyes, opened them and glared at the whole room, then forwent saying anything in reply to the news he’d been handed and swept out the door.

“Mystra, what a mess,” Khelben murmured when he was out of sight, looking at the door left ajar. But despite his words it was not just awkwardness and guilt he felt – _neither of which he’d have bothered with before his fundamental change of years ago_ – but also a tiny bit of relief over finally being freed of the burden of holding such a secret from his long-time ally, regardless of how frustrating he found the man.

“I suppose this is what we get for so insistently pressing the issue of volunteering information,” Gorion said, sitting on the nearest bed with a sigh.

Cyrus wasn’t focused on that, though. His eyes stayed on Elminster’s soul-light as the wizard strode to the staircase and proceeded to climb all the way to the roof of the fortress.

He’d been wrong, the dwarf realized, when he compared Torrin Ironstar to Tethtoril before. Tethtoril was more like what Elminster was right now. For all that Cyrus generally did not perceive anything other than inner calm from Candlekeep’s Priest of Mystra, that was only because the man seldom indulged in activities or thoughts that could break that inner calm. Cyrus could still see the soul and feelings as well as he did everyone else’s, as evident from the clarity with which he perceived them during that first meeting with Khelben when he was young.

So only the lines of death disappeared when a person actively channelled a deity. Presumably. Or at least the ones Cyrus naturally saw. He’d never actually cared enough to try and see if he could actively control the ability. Regardless, it meant that whatever made Torrin Ironstar seem like a dwarf-shaped glass-like mass of flame was something else. But what? A constant, soul-deep meditative state evocative of… whatever mysteries were associated with the Soul Forge from whence all dwarven souls supposedly came? And where all those same souls were destined to end up eventually?

If not for Torrin Ironstar’s apparent disinterest in him and his now ruined plans to see about his own business, or the things _other_ than feelings Cyrus sensed off the old priest, the young dwarf had no doubt he would have suspected him of lying about his goals and even identity. For an assassin or other to have disguised themselves in an attempt to take his life unawares was not out of the question. Especially since Sarevok Anchev had doppelgangers in his employ. Granted, Cyrus was sure he’d see through them as easily as he could anyone else, especially if they were out to kill, but the simple fact he _couldn’t_ read Torrin the same way he did everyone else meant there were ways to circumvent his perception, even if just incidentally.

But that was not the most urgent thing at the moment. The most urgent thing right now was the slowly crumbling resistance and distress that he could sense off Elminster even from all the way up on the roof. As well as the inkling of bitter resignation that had appeared at a point during whatever talk the Archmage was having with his patron goddess.

Cyrus glared up at the distant light through several walls and ceiling – _he shouldn’t have been able to get such an accurate read from that distance, which meant that whatever Mystra was saying was only making Elminster react more and more fervently, whichever directions his thoughts went_ – before looking down at his hands. Healthy and normal like any other dwarf’s, save for his beyond-peak might and constitution, as well as the liquid fire that only he could see, the cloud-like spirit finally whole and complete permeating his body down to the smallest fragment. For a moment, as he focused beyond the world, he saw all the way into that other place, that Astral Demiplane where he’d fought and slain his murderous begetter. Scarlet washed over the iridescent hue for a moment, both across those spiritual clouds and his body in the waking world. A colour not dissimilar from his Father’s own determination when he resolved to do everything he could for someone else. For him.

He clenched his fists until he felt them strain, bone and muscle both.

“Son?”

Cyrus turned to Khelben Arunsun instead. “I suppose this disclosure constitutes a breach of your privacy and trust on my part.”

His teacher looked his full nine hundred-some years but his eyes held no condemnation, and his soul didn’t either. “As opposed to the option of just standing by as events and circumstances devolve into whatever you had a premonition of?” The old mage smiled wryly. “I am not so deluded as to expect you to lie after never having said a lie in your life. Especially since that is the sole reason circumstances evolved to the point where I was able to look honestly at myself all those years ago. Forced to look at myself…” The man trailed off and looked between Cyrus and his Father before speaking to the former again. “I suppose I should be angry at you for trying to interfere with my Goddess’s plans, for derailing whatever events she had been preparing and keeping hidden from even me…” Khelben looked at him then. It was an odd mix of fond exasperation, soul-deep weariness and even a smidgen of grudging approval. “But you don’t care that much about _events_ , do you? You care about people.”

As opposed to never caring about anyone or anything, as had been the case until just that morning.

The silence that followed was not entirely comfortable and Cyrus wondered why Mystra wasn’t actively interfering with Khelben as well, but then he realized she could probably see into his head all the time anyway.

Even though the old half-elf had a Mind Blank going all the time.

Cyrus clenched his fists again and grit his teeth, shutting his eyes for a moment, before looking back up at his teacher. “Earlier you said you had something for father.”

The Archmage shook off an onset of green nettled shame not unlike the one of years before, if much weaker and distant, before turning from his memories back to his surroundings. “That’s right. I should probably see to that matter before we have to leave.”

Cyrus felt hesitant about his next request but if that discussion topside did not conclude as he hoped it would… “May I study your spellbook in the meantime?”

Khelben stopped in the act of reaching for a desk drawer and smiled wryly at him. “You mean will I actively contribute to your existence becoming even more ludicrous and disruptive than it is already?”

This was it, Cyrus thought glumly. If it was ever going to happen, this was the point where Mystra would be interfering, that crown of seven stars would appear like it had for Elminster just minutes earlier and –

“Alright.”

Cyrus blinked and stared at the thick, black-bound tome studded with glowing blue runes of power and arcane marks. The tome which the man had pulled out of his pocket of holding and was holding out for him to take. Cyrus looked up, blinking in sheer surprise. He was actually agreeing?

“Ah, that’s right.” The Archmage pulled it back, spoke a few words of power and tapped some of the runes in sequence. “Not that you wouldn’t be able to just nullify my wards with that ability of yours,” the old man muttered, then when the not-at-all-harmless protection wards were deactivated he held it out to him again.

“I… This is…” Cyrus trailed off and took the thick-as-a-dwarven-arm book with both hands, feeling rather astonished at the ancient man’s easy compliance. “… Thank you.”

Faint but heartfelt amusement radiated from the old wizard. “So this is what it feels like to take you by surprise to the point of speechless shock for once.” But the humour fell flat and the severity of the current situation smothered even that small bit of merriment quickly. “I know you know well just how long it takes to study even one spell, so I can only assume you mean to prepare for some future possibility you feel would be unsavoury. Choose wisely what you take from there, though I suppose I do not really have to tell _you_ that.”

Khelben had guessed well, though not perfectly. It was definitely a future possibility he meant to prepare for, but one that would be upon them _very_ soon if it happened at all.

As he sat down in the chair closest to the door, the young dwarf looked inward to the inner world he’d made for himself, to see just how far like an Astral Projection his act of secluding himself from all forces really had left him. He found himself floating cross-legged on a cloud, for a moment. He was at ease. He was at peace.

He was holding in his hands the Astral Projection of Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun’s large, bulky book of spells.

The dwarf twisted the projection of the book _just so_ to make it a separate, lasting thing rather than it being lost when the “spell” automatically refreshed itself and removed it from his astral equipment the moment he gave the original one back to his teacher.

Then he smiled grimly. Even though his overall power was going to be limited for a while, psionics were already showing themselves to be much more malleable than arcane spells. Granted, he wouldn’t be able to cast anything big for now, his ability to cheat at arcane spellcasting restricted to third circle or less. But going off into the night without proper preparations had nearly killed his Father once already, so Cyrus was resolved to pre-emptively acquire as many resources as possible and prepare himself for any future scenario he could think of from now on, even if some of those resources would be beyond his means to use for a while.

Like memorising every spell he came across in advance, seeing as he didn’t have to worry anymore about the Weave and associated law of forgetfulness making him forget those spells after using them.

He had no doubt he would need every advantage he could get a hold of. He’d not only eschewed the help of every possible good deity out there, but also rendered himself unseen to luck. Just because no overt evidence of that had emerged so far – beyond Tarnesh finding him so quickly, if that even counted – only meant circumstances were just piling up for a bigger mess at some later date.

Unless he was just being pessimistic…

He tried to cast a spell of Haste on himself to dilate the time available for his study of the spellbook, but it predictably failed to take. Not unexpected. As far as the Weave was concerned, he did not exist.

No, he definitely wasn’t just pessimistic.

He’d have to puzzle out psionic versions for everything meant to affect him specifically. Or something else. Maybe figure out what allowed Artefacts to work regardless of Weave availability?

The young dwarf looked thoughtfully, eyebrows climbing up a few degrees, at the Staff of the Magi that Khelben had pulled out of the Bag of Holding and was describing to Father, who looked overwhelmed by the enormity of being given something so valuable after everything else Khelben had done for them. “I’ve had Harpell working on this for the past few years. It was a bit of a challenge to find and implement substitutes for the conjuration spells, but Malcor actually enjoyed puzzling out the novel dweomer interaction. It still doesn’t quite measure up to the one you had before, but then again not many things will.”

Cyrus resolved to keep one ear on the ability list of the minor artefact. Most were the “standard” suite for a Staff of Magi, if anything could be standard for an item as mighty as that, but the Conjuration abilities (the only ones that actually caused catastrophic failure) were substituted for similar-level spells of different schools.

Oh yes, his Father’s new Staff was something Cyrus would _thoroughly_ examine in the very near future.

Then he leaned against the backrest and started reading, hoping to get all he needed for the short term before Elminster returned and he and Khelben took their leave. There was a very good reason he didn’t just ask this favour of his Father, despite knowing the man would gladly share with him all the magic he knew now that he didn’t have to worry about his son killing things, accidentally or not, and suffering some terrible fate as a consequence. His Father couldn’t copy or memorise spells of the school of Conjuration and Transmutation, among other things, so it wasn’t like Cyrus could go to him for Teleport.

Or Flight.

“-.  .-“

Sometime later, longer than Cyrus needed for his hurriedly thought up contingency but not as long as he’d have liked, Elminster came down from the roof looking world-threateningly aggravated but determined and no longer _quite_ as furious as before. He actually seemed to have reasserted that devil-may-care mien he generally favoured, but his soul still emitted shades of loss and the beginnings of longing, Seven star crown or not. “Right then,” he addressed the room at large, then specifically his fellow Chosen. “It appears I shall be accompanying you when we leave.”

Cyrus felt relief wash over him like a spray of cool water. He’d been aware of how tense he’d grown but his inner emotional interplay kept surprising him.

He allowed himself to sag slightly in his chair after he returned Khelben’s spellbook at his prompting.

“Let’s see what you were so interested in that your father couldn’t provide you. Hmm… Fly, Overland Flight, Dimension Door, Teleport,” Khelben muttered his way through several more spells – _no way magic would detect him using the tome so perhaps a ward to record which pages were open and for how long?_ – and gave Cyrus an odd look. “Dare I ask why you’ve been examining magic intended for long-distance travel? I thought you said your spellcasting would be limited for some time?”

“Fly is a level 3 spell,” never mind that he’d have to figure out a non-arcane version if he wanted to make it work for him. “And even with its limited speed I should still need no more than half a day at most to cover the distance between here and the Boareskyr Bridge. I expect that there is enough Bhaal essence in the waters there for me to absorb until I attain the ability to manipulate magic of at _least_ level 5. At which point I would have access to Teleport, thus enabling me to cut down the journey to Waterdeep from a month to an hour or so.”

There was a ponderous silence.

“Correct me if I heard that wrong, which I admit ‘twould not be entirely unreasonable to assume in mine old age,” Elminster said slowly, unamused. “But I dare say that sounded like an insinuation that I would delay or outright forgo looking up this hertofore unknown daughter of mine.” When Cyrus wouldn’t say anything to that – _it wasn’t a question so it wasn’t like he was necessarily expected to_ – the Archmage narrowed his eyes. “Perhaps I ought not have been so indulgent of thine airs these past few days, if it only served to render ye more prone towards unnecessary suspicion and antagonism, let alone this unjustified contempt.”

“I feel no suspicion, contempt or antagonism towards you.” Which was completely true.

“Thy deeds certainly say otherwise,’ Elminster said mildly, though he didn’t smile. “In spite of thy declaration that thou would be holding _certain matters_ separate from the rest.”

“No they don’t. I did not claim I feel no suspicion or antagonism or contempt.” Cyrus crossed his arms and looked past Eminster’s eyes to the presence hovering over his spirit, the seven stars forming a crown over his soul. “Only that I did not feel them towards _you_.”

All three wizards understood what he meant immediately, though only Khelben seemed to manage anything other than giving the young dwarf looks of abject disbelief.

“Right then, perhaps this conversation should end here before anyone says anything they might come to regret,” the half-elf advised.

“Oh no, let that lad speak freely, I insist,” Elminster disagreed, making Cyrus realize he’d been wrong about anger all his life. All he’d ever read or been told about emotions implied that inner peace and anger were mutually exclusive, yet he seemed to have no trouble feeling both of them right now, clearer and clearer the more Elminster spoke. “I am always quite interested in hearing the latest examples of youthful conceit. ‘Tis not every day that I come across someone brazen enough to insult the Goddess to my face, let alone to _her_ face.” Elminster’s eyes shifted into the beginnings of a warning glare at seeing his reaction. “Charisma won’t get ye out of trouble all the time, lad. Perhaps thou should listen to the wisdom of thy elders and rethink thy stance on _certain matters_ , seeing that it was definitely not that particular attribute that magic failed to enhance for thee.”

“Or perhaps I just believe you deserve better than to serve your _lawful neutral_ Goddess for nigh a thousand years, only for her to be replaced by one who fancies herself _neutral **good**_ and yet chooses as her very first act in regards to you to be … be… this!” The seven stars flared from sky blue to white as Elminster’s eyes flashed with something hard yet startled, surprised and confused both, but the dwarf couldn’t constrain his impulse to continue. Not entirely. “What next? Is she going to betray you to one of your oldest enemies at some point down the line on the justification of some supposedly ineffable purpose and foresight?”

Elminster seemed to shake in place, with anger, stupefaction or an odd nuance of hilarity, perhaps all three, before finally settling on a dismissive snort. “Thou should take care that thy paranoia doth not escalate to outright delusion, lad, though it might be too late already. The scenario which thou just described is as likely as Mystra deciding to make Manshoon into one of her Chosen.” Having thus completely dismissed the matter, the Archmage turned to Khelben. “I shall be on the roof.” He then left the room again, just like that.

He dismissed him. Elminster dismissed him. He dismissed everything he’d said. Just like that. As if whatever feelings engendered by Cyrus telling him he _valued his wellbeing and fair treatment over the gods themselves_ disappeared as soon as he thought about them, assuming he was able to think about them at all.

The dwarf felt like he would be ill at the similarities with all the times _his_ feeling disappeared as soon as he thought about them. Felt like his palms would spurt blood if he clenched his fists any harder, but that was only a distant concern in the face of… of…

Was he the only one who saw just how perverse this entire situation was!?

“Son?”

Cyrus spun on his feet, forcibly unclenched his hands and looked levelly between Gorion and Khelben, then settled on the former. “Not that I expect it with your crippled spellcasting ability, but Father? If Mystra ever pops up and offers to make you into one of her Chosen, I honestly hope you say no.”

Gorion was about to try and come up with some reply while Khelben looked like he was ready to say something already, but Cyrus didn’t feel he could listen to anything they had to say without slipping into yet another tirade, so he followed Elminster’s example and left the suite as well. Better to be slightly rude to them and have a follow-up, rational discussion later rather than get into an argument with his teacher after everything they’d been through together.

Khelben had shared with his Father and him _many_ facts about his past, among which were the few romantic associations he involved himself in and the children and grandchildren they earned him, even if one of them left Toril for other worlds. All _without_ Mystra manipulating him or his progeny without his knowledge. The old Goddess was as egregiously insensitive as they came, prone to doing things like turn her chief Chosen into a woman without his consent, and keep him that way for years. But at least she was upfront about what she wanted done, even if she did go under an alias during her initial association with Elminster.

Then again, Mystra wouldn’t have chosen Midnight as her contingency plan if the woman wasn’t at least somewhat alike, so perhaps the old Goddess would have still ordered Khelben to assist in the conception of Elminster’s daughter if, say, the Time of Troubles happened ten years later.

Dammit.

What a disaster of a conversation.

Over the next ten minutes the dwarf managed to calm himself down by virtue of distracting himself via tying up some loose ends. Such as retrieving Imoen and tracking Torrin down to tell him to cast Nap Stack on the Mirrorshades since Gellanna had used up all her spells for healing. As it happened, Torrin didn’t have the spell prepared but he could perform a ritual with the same effect so he accompanied Cyrus while he tracked down Bentley and offered to do that, much to both gnomes’ appreciation. Afterwards, he also tracked down Eddard Silvershield with a very specific purpose in mind, which the man agreed to after thinking on it for a minute or so.

Feeling considerably more hopeful and clear-headed after that, Cyrus then took Imoen aside and told her _the plan_.

Because by _sod_ he wouldn’t let this parting be on irreconcilable terms and he also wasn’t going to stand by and watch people in whose happiness he was invested be treated like this, no matter _what_ Mystra had to say on the matter.

Thus it was that Cyrus Anwar and his sister not much later emerged on the roof of the Friendly Arm Inn where the three wizards had congregated, with Bentley in tow. The gnome was far from ready to allow any unsupervised spellcasting on his property after that morning’s events, even _with_ the sack of diamonds he’d be spiriting away via that Portal he had in a secret level under the basement.

Selûne already shone against the darkening backdrop of the twilight.

More importantly, Elminster did not have his pipe out and the two Archmages seemed just about ready to cast their spell to teleport away at any moment, so rather than provide any window for awkwardness to settle in, Cyrus strode over to Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun and gave him a long, heartfelt hug.

The ancient man returned it immediately and properly this time, and Cyrus was glad to see that there was no reluctance present on the outside _or_ inside. Even if it was disheartening how sharply that iridescent affection in the old half-elf clashed with the hue of Elminster’s sceptical cynicism from a few feet away. At least there was a spark of hopeful respect in there, deep down, but it wasn’t him the dwarf wanted to talk to. It was Khelben he addressed, not moving. “I apologise for so abruptly walking out on you and Father earlier but I did not want to stay and possibly say something offensive or unfair in anger.”

“I forgive you,” Khelben said in a reversal of Cyrus’ own forgiveness when he’d said the same, so long ago. “And though I may not be able to say the same of _certain parties_ , we two _have_ had all the years necessary to build trust. I would like to think I know better than to hold a few angry words against you, particularly since you’ve only had a few hours’ worth of experience with emotions so far.”

As opposed to _certain parties_ dismissing everything _else_ he said due to having a problem with just a sentence or two, but Cyrus didn’t say that. He allowed himself instead to feel only what Khelben did, for a moment. The iridescence washed over and through his own fully realized soul, and he knew it would not just be the memory of Bentley’s spirit he would evoke in the future, when he needed to make a point.

After half a minute or so, the dwarf pulled away and looked up at the black-haired mage, keeping hold of his hands. “Be well, Honoured Teacher,” he murmured. “I love you.”

The rainbow-like iridescence cascaded outward during that instant when Khelben returned his smile with one of his own, small but warm and as earnest as anything could be. “You say that so easily.”

“They are three simple words,” Cyrus replied, pointedly not looking at where Elminster radiated baffled surprise at the sight of Khelben being openly emotional towards anyone yet again, let alone him. “Why should I fear them if they are true?”

Perhaps he should have expected Imoen to shatter the moment, but then again letting her do as she willed with only the broadest mission briefings was the whole point.

“Well that’s not fair!” She cried out, scandalized, instantly capturing the attention of everyone there assembled. “I want a goodbye hug too!” At which point she strode to Elminster and inflicted one upon him, no by your leave, no nothing.

The Archmage sighed at the treatment but did not protest or push her away, even though his soul practically simmered with suspicion and scepticism, no doubt recalling her display during dinner when he spoiled her enthusiasm over the Pie Imbued With Zestful Zazesspurian Adornments. He was also getting ready to say something witty or pithy, Cyrus could never tell with him. Not perfectly anyway.

But before he could, a certain twice-buckled belt clicked in place around his waist, making him instead shout, in an entirely feminine pitch, the words “Young lady!”

“Ha!” Imoen danced away from Elminster’s reflexive grab. “I got you!” She crowed in triumph, whirling away from him with a dramatic sweep of her cloak. “Justice has been met for you will _always_ remember this as the day that you _almost_ got the best of Imoen the Magnificent!” Her boast complete, she dashed away and flew down the trapdoor.

Literally. Cyrus had cast Fly on her for that specific occasion, plus Non Detection besides, though it seemed the latter wouldn’t be necessary.

Elminster – _or is it Elmara now?_ – huffed good-naturedly and muttered the words for Break Enchantment, causing the belt to unbuckle and the transformation to reverse. Then he unexpectedly gave the girdle a telekinetic push so that it swept through the air and snapped around Cyrus’ waist moments later.

Nothing happened.

“Well that be no fun at all,” grumbled the Archmage who occasionally moonlighted as thief, fighter, priest and priestess.

Less than a minute of Khelben’s poorly concealed amusement later, the two Archmages finally teleported away.

There was a moment of peace and quiet.

Then Imoen poked her head out of the trapdoor. “Are they gone?”

“Yes, little sister, they are,” Cyrus replied.

Hope whooped, flew out into the open night and performed a series of loops in the air, laughing in delight, then landed next to Cyrus where she stood at ceremony and solemnly held out her _prize_. “Happy birthday, big brother.”

“Thank you, little sister,” the dwarf answered just as solemnly, taking his _prize_ and hugging her for a minute or so, much to her pleasure. “I love you.”

Then he broke away, held his _prize_ by the bowl and proceeded to speak a certain rhyme his short _episode_ before dawn had revealed to him, then a second one of his own devising, then a third and fourth just to be sure.

That done, Cyrus Anwar sent a bemused Bentley Mirrorshade a grin and turned to Gorion who was gaping and had his finger pointed at the _prize_ as he looked upon his son, aghast.

“Father,” puff puff went the pipe. “I have a cunning plan.”

Half an hour later, he launched into the sky.

“-.  .-“

Five hundred-some miles away, Elminster Aumar was unfurling a scroll that his pipe had turned into as soon as he’d placed the stem in his mouth. But some good-natured trick or message from Mystra was not what he found inside. Instead, he got confirmation that Gorion’s step-son would make a terrible Harper, as opposed to Imoen who would probably become the best, possibly without any of the others realising she even was one.

_Since I was unsure you would take me at my word if I just said this outright, due to thinking I was only saying it under pressure with the others there, I’ll do it here instead: Thank you for everything you’ve done for me._

_However, since I **did** say I would be holding the issue of Father’s endangerment separate from everything else, I fear I simply **had** to see justice done through other means. I admit that the less than stellar farewell resulting from us disagreeing on Mystra’s treatment of you tempted me to drop my plan. However, she did this to your daughter and yourself in defiance of all fairness, Common Sense and all principles of ‘do unto others.’ This and the fact that she did this to you despite you being the elder in your relationship, effectively proving she has no more respect for her elders than you think I do, made me decide to push forward nevertheless._

_I do apologise for the distress or whatever other unpleasantness resulted from our disagreement, but I am not sorry that I revealed to you the existence of your daughter, no matter what Mystra has to say on the matter. Why, I consider it so important that I feel it more than makes up for the assistance you provided me in my efforts against Bhaal’s vestige. Which is why I am not making a promise to make it up to you in the future, since I already have._

_Not that this should matter. We’re both good and, at least in the case of one of us, sensible people, so we’re guaranteed to help each other if necessary regardless._

_That said, I think you can do well as a parent. You have the greatest resource towards enabling such efforts available in the form of Father after all._

_Good luck in your search._

_And just so we’re clear, if I find out you’ve been made to forget about your daughter due to **certain parties** favouring some ineffable purpose or other, I’ll come down there and look for her myself._

_And Imoen will help. I think we can both agree this needs no further elaboration._

_Signed,_

_Cyrus Anwar, son of the Sage Gorion of Candlekeep and technical Bhaalspawn._

_P.S._

_I love you._

_I’m keeping the pipe though._

“Oh, those little _miscreants!_ ”


	19. Baldur's Gate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so we engage our first solo enemy, a level 16 Master of Undeath bonus boss!

Spelljammers. The primary method of moving through space, converting magical energy into motive force. Magically-powered vessels that could travel great distances, even into the Sea of Night, the wildspace and beyond even that, past the boundaries of Crystal Spheres and into the currents of the phlogiston, the endless sea of rainbow colours lying outside of and between the crystal shells of World Spheres. Though “vessel” could be a misnomer since technically anything could become a spelljammer thanks to those things called Helms.

Helms. They could be slapped on basically anything and moved large amounts of mass by channeling spell energy into them. Granted, they generally only pushed things forward and maneuvering needed to be done through sails and oars, but the point remained.

The Arcane did good work.

Or at least that was what he _would_ have said until an hour prior, based on his readings, before he learned that the Arcane did not actually build the Helms they sell. Instead, all Helms – each a living if not sentient thing – apparently came from the Helm Maker, or First Helm, a sentient magical artefact that effectively procreated and whose offspring the Arcane sold to any and all who wanted to go sailing through wildspace. Though money was likely ultimately a secondary concern for the Arcane, whether or not they knew it or admitted it. Instead, Helms were actually part of the latest work of art being planned by the Arcane race’s masters, the Reigar. Because their _Masterstroke_ , the series of cataclysmic wars and their climax which consisted of their home planet’s destruction, did not seem to be enough for that bunch anymore. Now they were using Helms to steal knowledge from Helm Pilots and accumulate it all in First Helm as part of their convoluted plan to top their greatest work of art by destroying _a whole Crystal Sphere_ next. Eventually. It didn’t matter which.

Seemed that the Reigar could think their way around their abhorrence of repetition and imitation so long as they looked at things as _tools_ for creating art rather than works of art themselves. With ‘art’ in this case meaning killing every living thing on a Sphere-wide scale. Though he supposed he should acknowledge that mass genocide was just a side show to the greater performance of the Sphere’s destruction as far as that race of sparkling nutcases was concerned.

The living device’s role in the broad methodology for inflicting wide-scale death and destruction settled in his mind. And as he stood on the lip of the crow’s nest and leaned against the tip of the mast with one arm folded and the other holding his pipe to his mouth, Cyrus Anwar stared down at the sailing ship’s Helm, blinking owlishly.

What was he even supposed to _do_ with his information?

After the next ten minutes failed to provide him with a response, the dwarf gave a smoky sigh and flew off, glad the relative darkness hid him from most eyes, insofar as any of the very few people out at two in the morning bothered to look up. He supposed the sentries manning the Seatower of Balduran could have spotted him, but that particular edifice was on the opposite side of the  massive docks so he wasn’t too worried, especially since he wasn’t about to overfly the city. He’d already done that for the past hour. And the flight over from the Friendly Arm Inn had, by itself, done a decent job of sating his thirst for the freedom of weightless drifting. It had, after all, taken six hours all on its own.

Granted, that wyvern that swooped up at him half an hour into his glide over Cloakwood – and what kind of wyvern went hunting strange aerial creatures at midnight? – did rather rattle him. It engaged him in a rather frustrating game of hawk and dove until he got tired of it and ascended as high as the clouds, then turned invisible. It meant he spent a minute or so in freefall while the monster gave up and went home. He couldn’t keep more than one self-targeted continuous spell-like ability of maximum available level active at once, so using magic would have meant fighting it in freefall or grappling with it, both of which he decided against. He’d have considered fighting it, but he had no experience in the air and did not want to risk losing Thearabho’s sword to the thick woods below.

Even with that startling encounter to inure him to the hazards of travel he’d not expected to run into something _this_ mindblowing though. And to think that the ship looked like any old sailing ship, and was being used as a gambling hall and mobile brothel to boot.

Cyrus landed in the shadows on the quay and considered going in, perhaps using this as an opportunity to discover the psionic version of Detect Thoughts.

But then he decided that he would be better off staying physically away from this particular problem. He had enough things to deal with, and the purpose of his solitary flight to Baldur’s Gate came with a timetable besides.

Thus reasoned, the dwarf turned his back on the Low Lantern and proceeded off the quays and down the street.

He passed by the Harbormaster’s large hall, as well as a large edifice, multi-storied and built in a manner different from the buildings around it, older and steeped in history not altogether bloodless. The recently-acquired Iron Throne Headquarters. Too dangerous to brave alone, especially without some form of official backing. The dwarf did not pause in his step and gave it but a passing glance as he walked on, more focused on acclimatizing himself to this bastion of civilization so different from anything he was used to. Candlekeep was quite populous but the permanent residents provided a certain spiritual and emotional consistency to the place. He supposed the Friendly Arm Inn and Baldur’s Gate were the same, but there and here there was no familiarity for him to steady his feelings on, and his healthy emotional range meant he had to pay himself as much attention as he did others’ soul force, as opposed to before when he didn’t care enough to bother with or truly _experience_ either.

It was good that he’d come here at night, when the place was slumbering, rather than be exposed to the full bustle of city life from the onset. It allowed him to get used to the place and scale things up at his own pace. Such as by entering Jopalin’s Tavern and getting a midnight snack, as well as joining in on the raucous singing of a group of sailors who pulled him into a surprise rendition of “He's a Jolly Good Fellow” for no reason whatsoever. It took a couple of stanzas for his voice to find itself but he believed he’d done well. Then, over the time it took to finish his mug of ale and figure out Detect Thoughts, he listened to an old dockhand named Kerrachus. First as he expressed his disbelief over how daft some people could be for thinking the world was round, then as he expressed his pity-filled exasperation over Cyrus “buying into that nonsense” after the dwarf used illusions to help give an impromptu lesson on “Crystal Sphere Geophysics” as Karan called them. A lesson which everyone in the bar raptly listened to and then proceeded to dismiss as hogwash even as they heartily thanked him for the show and could he come back now and then to give them more illustrated tall tales?

Cyrus left Jopalin’s Tavern with superficial telepathy fully mastered and in possession of the petty secrets of over a dozen different people.

Over the next hour he handed coppers to half a dozen beggars, foiled the pickpocketing attempts of a couple street urchins, and even used cantrips to stick warning notes to the foreheads of that group of teens who were playing bait and sap, thinking to lure him to a side alley with screams so that their friends could jump him. He utilised the same technique to slip anonymous tips regarding a couple of planned murders into the tabard pockets of the rare patrolling Flaming Fist mercenary.

There, that should be enough to derail the worst issues set to be caused by the people he came across. Now all he had to do was get past the shanty town and make his way up to the inner district and wait until it was a less ungodly hour. There ought to be _some_ tavern nearby. The Helm and Cloak, if he wasn’t mis-

 ** _Murder/not-death/blissful-anticipation_** seeped into his range with slithering chill so intense that he jerked mid-pace, feeling like acid had just burned a hole in the living fabric of the world. Whirling to the southwest abruptly enough to startle the Flaming Fist patrolman at the other end of the street, the young dwarf pinned his sight on a spot several hundred meters and five rows of shanty houses away, a hole where it looked as if all the colour had just disappeared from the world, leaving just pus-like sickness he could see as clearly as he could a sun at midday, even through ten different sets of walls.

Then the wound in the life of the world passed again outside of his range as quickly as he’d noticed it, leaving a stain to linger, like traces of venom on open flesh.

A stain and the memory of a symbol he’d seen etched all over what once might have been a soul. A rod topped with a skull.

“Orcus!” Cyrus hissed.

Then he dashed forward – **_murder/not-death/blissful-anticipation_** _seeped back into range even as it skulked on its way_ – followed with a flight-propelled jump that carried him all the way to the roof of the closest slum home, from where he proceeded to sprint forward, leaping past the occasional gap between the ramshackle huts as he went and contemplating the sudden urge to curse both mentally and verbally.

Then he noticed that the sick infection had been so jarring that he hadn’t noticed the quiet, sluggish soul of the still living burden it carried over its shoulder and Cyrus Anwar was past _contemplating_.

The dwarf cleared the last gap between shanty houses – _a fleeting glimpse of his quarry confirmed the history he’d already read despite the obstacles, so blatant and repugnant it was_ – and sacrificed speed for the silence of flight as he closed the last bit of distance to the multi-story homestead – _devoid of soul light throughout, save odd scattered pinpricks in the depths of the basement_ – in whose bowels the gnome-looking dwarf had disappeared, burden slung over his shoulder.

Cyrus he landed sideways on the wall, pulled Jondalar’s dagger form his boot, fell nearly all the way to the ground where he reengaged flight and cut _death_ into the flimsy wall.

Then, because the space between the homes – _dark, filthy, thick with smells of feces and refuse_ – was barely enough to fit his frame, the dwarf kicked off the opposite home and crashed straight through the compromised wall face in a shower of broken planks, loam and wood shavings.

The wretched creature – _dwarf/gnome half-breed, empowered follower of Tenebrous, 32-times guilty serial child murdered, 33 rd kill currently in progress –_ yelped and gave a start violent enough to dislodge the sac-covered child on his shoulder, giving Cyrus the perfect opening.

 _Empower –_ the creature gasped and half-pushed away, half jumped from his latest would-be victim like an eel – _Momentum!_

The copper coin sailed through the air faster than the eye could see, but rather than go through the dwarf-shaped monster’s eye and out the back, it _missed_.

The creature _– Neb –_ fell and rolled away, somehow, getting off with just a cut a groove through the skin on the side of the neck and rolled down the stairs, disappearing in the gloom of the basement beyond the range of Cyrus’ nightvision.

The unconscious child settled on the floor then…

And the 32 odd pinpricks of soul light scattered throughout the basement below suddenly revealed themselves for what they were in a chorus of heart-breaking, childish wails that flew like white blurs up through the floor, tearful sobs and psychic screams carried on necrotic afterimages that soon passed from _beyond-wall_ into waking, physical sight.

Before leaving the Friendly Arm, Gorion had listened to his plan. Then he’d questioned him on said plan. Contested it, questioned him again, _objected_ , then paced some more, on and off until he surrendered to his son’s determination to do this. To fly all the way here since even though he’d managed to cheat and scribe a Teleport scroll with the help of some charges from the new Staff, the spell would fail to work on him as a side effect of his self-channeled power. Father had looked like he was about to question him on what that actually meant, having already cottoned on to his son holding something back from everyone else, but ultimately let the matter lie. Finally, Father only told him to be careful and not let himself get diverted from his path unless it was a life or death situation.

Then Gorion’s brow furrowed and the man gave Cyrus that worried, forlorn look he always put on when he didn’t know what to do for him, and told him to never mind what he just said, because he was headed for the big city and finding some terrible life-threatening situation to land in the middle of was practically guaranteed.

Cyrus Anwar ducked to avoid a spectral knife swap from the enslaved soul of a 6-year-old human boy, tanked through the stabs from two others – _ice-cold and weakening as they sunk deep into his chest and went out the other side, cutting nothing but harming everything –_ snatched up the still unconscious boy just as two more enslaved souls emerged through the floor right ahead of him, a gnome girl of 5 and a human girl of 8 this time. His breath already came in short gasps and he felt like his lungs would shatter, cold and burning at once.

Then, as he assessed his surroundings, the dwarf grimly thought that, as always, his father had been completely right.

Well.

Time to get to work.

Cyrus Anwar kicked off the ground just as the next couple of agony/terror/despair burst from where his feet used to be, tucked the human boy against his chest, kicked off the wall and crashed out through the window.


	20. The Dark Side of Baldur’s Gate

Orcus. Former Demon Lord on par with Demogorgon and Graz’zt and master of the undead, despite that he utterly loathed the things. Described as having the head and legs of a goat, although with ram-like horns, a bloated body, bat-like wings, and a long tail. Started out as a wicked mortal spellcaster, possibly a priest of some dark deity, and wound up in the Abyss after death, where he became a larva and underwent the natural growth cycle of demons, from larva to mane, to dretch, rutterkin, vrock, glabrezu, nalfeshnee and, finally, balor. After that, he became a demon lord, Prince of the Undead and ruler of Thanatos, the layer of the Abyss also known as the Belly of Death. The only goal left for him at that point was the title of Prince of Demons, belonging to Demogorgon and coveted by Graz’zt as well. This was a good thing for the planes since it put the three into mortal opposition. One had to wonder why this opposition didn’t escalate and eventually settle after Orcus achieved true godhood, however he’d done it, but it never did. Just before the turn of the second millennium DR, Orcus lost much of his power and influence after he bet on a Red Wizard named Zhengyi and gave him control over many undead, thus provoking retaliation from Gareth Dragonsbane and his company who banished Orcus’ power from Realmspace by stealing his wand. This caused all of Zhengyi’s undead to disintegrate and his hold, Castle Perilous, to crumble along with the Witch-King’s death. It also gave the drow demi-goddess Kiaransalee the opening she needed to slay Orcus in his own realm and take over Thanatos, at which point she hid the Wand of Orcus away somewhere and did all she could to erase Orcus’ name from existence.

As Cyrus Anwar landed on the dry filth-covered cobblestone outside of the serial child killer’s ramshackle homestead, latest near-victim still unconscious in his arms, his thoughts raced trying to figure out why he even had to drag up those utterly random facts. The only reason he even knew as much as he did was because one of Candlekeep’s early Avowed had been a former planeswalker who lucked into being told the story by some deity or other while staying at the World Serpent Inn. And the chief detail that stood out from that obscure piece of lore was that Orcus had been dead and gone for centuries.

And yet the dwarf had just seen his symbol stamped all over the soul of that sick, twisted dwarf/gnome wretch - _dwome? gnorf? such things were unheard of on Toril since the Dwarven side bred true in hybrids_ – holed up in the basement of the shanty homestead ahead of him. The homestead from whose door and walls had already emerged four of six enslaved souls.

The dwarf strafed aside to avoid the closest one – _incorporeal beings require supernatural techniques, quarters to close to swing Sightless properly even here outside, age and enslaved nature of targets renders retaliation unpalatable. Recourse? Defensive force spell –_ pulled his father’s remaining Rod of Absorption from his side pouch as he flew backwards up the street several meters – _max level for unassisted spell-like abilities: 3, four charges remaining in Rod_ – and grabbed the Weave of Magic all around him – _odds of death: 12%_ .

Cyrus faltered and got himself stabbed through the side by a ghost-like blade – _ice cold enough to burn his bones and flesh all the way to the lung –_ and half-staggered, half flew out of reach and away from it and its two closest cohorts with a pained gasp, then grit his teeth, pulled one charge out of the rod and clamped his spirit over the Weave again – _odds of death: 24%!_ – and cast Resilient Sphere over the boy and himself.

Four child-like spirits blurred like streaks of mist but bounced off the Force Sphere he’d erected at the last second, young voices wailing like cold frost over the faint gong of the impacts their spirits made against the shell. Self-lights of slum dwellers jerked or started in their homes all around them from the eerie noise.

Cyrus set the unconscious boy down less gently than he intended – _chill thawing, internal damage regenerating not entirely painlessly –_ and checked to make sure his unintendedly rough handling didn’t inflict any serious damage, then studied the young ghosts that Neb fancied could become his killers.

He had other things on his mind though.

_Death probability sharply increased – odds of death, 24% - and not falling at any perceptible rate. Event unrelated to current aggressors or their master, no other recognizable threats in range. Incidence classification? Aberration, caused by technique no different from those used throughout whole life. Soul Sight eliminates possibility of magically or psionically concealed enemies other than those already engaged, save any via extradimensional means or Artefacts, possibly. Conclusion? Cause external and/or outside range of perception but unknown. Likely explanation? External and/or previously dormant factors emergent since Slayer confrontation._

The sack-covered boy– _soul going from dim, near-stillness to confused shades of half-perception_ – started to twitch and move.

Cyrus crouched, untied the rope holding the sack mouth tight against the boy’s calves and pulled off the sack entirely. Then he reached down to touch the boy on his shoulder and cautiously shifted some of his spiritual power into positive energy.

_Odds of death 24%. Unaltered by use of spell-like abilities or – Detect Thoughts on slowly waking boy – psionics._

Cyrus reached out to grasp the Weave for a Dimension Hop spell – _odds of death 32%!_ – and let go immediately – _odds of death 32%._

_Pattern established. Conflicting data identified: prior experience with casting in this manner regardless of spell level had no ill effects or odds of drawing negative attention from outside sources. Hypothesis? Mystra actually paying attention and actively looking for what effectively qualifies as the Weave spontaneously casting spells on its own. Liable to identify self as the one who became a wanted man in the eyes of the multiverse the day prior._

The human boy snapped from his insensate state to startled and then fearful wakefulness. More importantly. The odds of the dwarf’s own death did not further mount. Cyrus Anwar found that he could only crouch over the groggy human boy and look at the child ghosts outside the shimmering sphere, feeling aggravated.

At least now he knew what the consequences were for mouthing off to Mystra on Elminster’s behalf.

Dammit.

The things he did for love, honestly!

And Mystra wasn’t even out to do anything to him herself, most likely. She was just putting herself in the best position to find him out without even knowing it. The dwarf had to admit he’d never really heard of a Power becoming accessory to a murder by complete accident. At least not a mortal’s murder. That was a new one.

A cough came from below. “Cough… wha?” The boy – _Casson_ – found his voice just as the child ghosts’ master decided he wasn’t in the mood to wait and commanded the ghosts to charge mindlessly against the force sphere. “Aaarh! Wh… what’s going on!?”

Cyrus would have offered some reassurance but the more he read from the boy’s mind the more annoyed he was with him so he decided to go for expediency instead – _Calm Emotions_ – and focus on his more immediate problems. Namely the weeping, wailing, agonised child spirits harming themselves as they uncontrollably charged against his protective barrier, again and again and again.

The dwarf stood up and pondered. He hadn’t had time to experiment with conjuration effects so he hadn’t developed the psionic alternative to teleportation effects yet.

However…

_Minor Image to mask sounds and overlay fake illusion of self and boy. Pull out copper coin once true moves are unseen and…_

The coinflip ended with the copper coin striking the inside of the force sphere and falling to the ground useless.

Trial and error then.

He only managed a partial success on the fifth coinflip, and needed six more before he attained a consistent success rate in his efforts to figure out the power he needed. The killer ghosts kept pounding on the outside all the while, to the point where their integrity started to break down, only for them to retreat, weeping, through the walls and ground to the basement and be replaced by others of the 32 spirits that Neb creature had under his thrall.

A taunt. This Neb creature was compelling his thralls to go to such self-damaging lengths to throw his helplessness in his face over being reluctant to harm the spirits himself.

Casson had by then huddled at his feet and was clinging to his legs, unfortunately.

“Boy.”

A start but no release.

“Boy, let go of me if you expect me to get us out of this mess you made for yourself.”

“I didn’t mea-“

“NOW.”

Casson flinched and let go with a gulp and Cyrus spared no more delays.

 _Dimensional Hop_.

The world warped and changed around him, and from one moment to the next he felt like he was about to fall all on his face and puke out his whole stomach, leaving him dazed and stumbling forward, collapsing to his knees just in front of the closed door of the shack on the other side of the road from the shimmering sphere of force.

That… that hadn’t gone over very well.

Being incapacitated cost him two ethereal stabs to the back and one that would have gone through his head _– death flashed before his eyes –_ if not for him throwing himself forward and rolling aside. Even so he almost got hit again from below, ghostly children ready to impale him on their incorporeal knives, but he was done being passive.

Just as he was about to get skewered with the equivalent of Chill Touch for the nth time, Cyrus scowled and flooded his whole body with positive energy.

The two closest child ghosts flinched and blasted backwards with punishing force when their necrotic strikes met positive life-giving energy. Cyrus ignored their cries and wails this time, climbing to his feet unsteadily and assessing his surroundings as best he could through the sick feeling and pounding headache that weren’t going away as quickly as he’d liked but were fading nonetheless.

_Resilient Sphere still… still in place around that fool boy. Ghosts no longer throwing themselves at it in favour of attacking unprotected target. Assault currently interrupted due to short-range warding effect of self-healing energy. Door to murderer’s homestead just one meter behind._

The ghosts, or their master, realised what he meant to do as soon as he decided it, commanding his ghostly minions to converge on him all at once, but Cyrus had their measure now and he knew one thing that was specifically designed for situations like this, and it just so happened he could change his spiritual power into positive energy at will.

_Turn undead._

The faint white aura radiating from his body disappeared but the energy didn’t, spreading instead out from him and infusing the surroundings in the antithesis of undeath.

The child ghosts stumbled, cried out and burst into smoke.

But their wails didn’t stop and the white streaks of mist did not disperse entirely. Instead, they fled, flew around him and sunk through plaster walls and road stones to return to their master below where yet more of their fellows were taking form. Necrotic energy mounted more than before and Cyrus could see the enslaved souls gaining form and definition beyond anything they had before.

Soul-deep agony flared in them higher than even the worst he’d seen during that whole confrontation.

Cyrus smashed the door down with a snarl in his haste to get inside. He slipped on a not quite old stain of blood and grease for his trouble but caught himself on the banister, then heaved himself around and charged down the stairs to the basement. He took them three at a time – _death flashed before his eyes –_ jumped over the first spike trap, bent forward and twisted to avoid the worst of the second one just beyond – _grooves were gouged in his neck and side by iron bolts with force great enough to pierce through his splint mail_ – and rolled head over heels to avoid the grease splatter that would have otherwise caught him from both sides, leaving him prime target for the fire trap that Neb set off the next instant from where he was hiding behind the large stack of decrepit crates and sacks on the far side of the basement.

He managed to jump through the short-lived blaze before he could get more than slightly singed, at which point he had to duck out of the way of a 7 year-old human girl spectre and then only barely brought Jondalar’s dagger up in time to block the spectral knife of a 5-year old boy.

Something half-way between a sigh and a gong sounded in the sepulchral silence of the pitch-black basement. If that hadn’t been more than enough for Cyrus to know he wasn’t just facing incorporeal enemies anymore, the 11-year-old boy that emerged from the cupboard under the stairs and stabbed him under the arm left no room for doubt.

“Urkh!”

_Odds of death 43%._

Staggering away with gritting teeth and a chocked gasp from what would be a fatal strike on a normal person, Cyrus fell to one knee and mentally cursed Mystra or whoever or whatever it was that was looking for him and confusing his perception of his own death as a result, and otherwise preventing him from using his full means.

“Have you reason to be here? I do not recall summoning such as you!” Neb taunted, flitting from one hiding place to the next. “Do I... know you? I do not think it is so. Are you a would-be hero, then, come to sniff me out? Try as many have, you won't succeed!”

Cyrus ripped one of the banister poles with his good arm and hurled it at Neb’s head just as the creature jumped briefly into direct line of sight.

“Gah!” Neb yelped, ducking out of the way with unnatural reflexes. Glimmers of souls not his own shone from a belt around his torso, giving Cyrus’ black and white natural darkvision extra hues and shades. “So my life has caught up with me then?” He snarled, empowering himself off the energy of the souls he had trapped.

The dwarf watched, listened and flooded his body with positive energy again, doing his best not to black out from the pain, blood loss and staggered breathing as the wound under his arm knitted back together.

“Why, friend? Who... who is it that sent you here?”

“No one,” Cyrus growled tightly. “This s just me doing some gutter cleaning. Totally random, I assure you.”

“But think of what my death will mean. Think of the children, hehehee!” Neb giggled and scurried around the far side of the room, sheltered by the many refuse piles and containers, some empty and some holding the bodies of dead. Young, innocent dead. “So be it, though I shall miss the children so. Ah yes, the children...” The oozing infection on the world tossed out six gimmers of white up in a spread. “Come then! Attack! And let your death be a riddle for some other fool to solve!”

Possibilities and probabilities formed and came together in his mind as death odds mounted above what his earlier spellcasting had done. Neb would will the souls trapped in those six pearls to materialise and gang up on him, two aiming for the back of his knees, two for the gaps in his collarbones and two for his eyes. Options for evasion, countermoves and undead turning bloomed as possible counters in his mind immediately, but each path inevitably ended with the creature escaping the basement, the homestead and the Prime Material itself once Neb reached the secret Portal just five hovels away. Portal whose “key” was a pair of pearls being juggled one-handed while the person whistled a random tune and walked backwards with their eyes closed shut. For every child spirit Cyrus felled, Neb would be able to conjure one more as a distraction and still make his way around him, up the stairs and all the way to that Portal with two pearls to spare. Though the killer could not control more than six wraiths at once, he could replenish the numbers at little cost to himself.

The moment loomed before him.

Then the dwarf grimly resigned himself to getting that _look_ from his father later, pulled a copper coin from his pocket and – _feather fall –_ flipped it as high as he could _,_ after which he charged straight to where he knew Neb was headed. Three leaps in he turned on his feet sideways to avoid being hamstrung by the ghosts who emerged from the crate and wall on both sides, blocked one knife strike with his shoulder pad – _partial success, piece of refuse his armour was even made from good iron_ – parried the fourth slash with Jondalar’s dagger and – _magic fang –_ grabbed the wrist of the fifth ghost, stopping it cold.

It left him open to the sixth, who emerged _through_ its fellow and slashed his knife across his face, right through both eyes.

He fell back with a howl.

Cyrus flailed blindly for precious moments, caught the back of his foot on the corner of the crate next to him and fell off his feet, barely catching himself before he sprawled entirely and covered his eyes with his other forearm. The wails of despair of the child ghosts barely made it to his attention over the shock of the sudden blindness and the resulting agony.

And at the foot of the stairs, **_Murder/not-death/blissful-anticipation_** came to a halt, surprised.

Cyrus backed away as he tried to get back to his feet, somehow, but ran into something solid, and before he could do more than reach back to pull himself up, a child ghost stabbed him in the stomach, followed by two others who got him in the gaps in his collarbones. He braced himself for whatever the other three would do, but they didn’t approach. Instead, they floated aside as Neb came over, **_Murder/not-death/blissful-anticipation_** turning faintly surprised and more than a little pleased.

“Oh... hee hee! Oh, it seems Lady Luck favours me still! Oh, I bet you are very sorry now, indeed!” The creature giggled madly, all but strutting forth. “You have found me out, and now you must pay, oh yes. A little old for my taste, but no matter! The children seem fond of you, so I-“

Cyrus mentally reached out, cancelled the Feather Fall on the slowly falling coin, mentally tugged it towards him and lashed out to strike it as soon as it came within range, right on the edge.

 _Empower Momentum_.

Neb gasped and jumped aside in time, guessing what was about to happen from the moment his arm blurred into motion, somehow, but this time he was too close to dodge fully. The coin didn’t go through his throat and out his spine, but it still ripped out almost half the flesh on the left side of his neck as it shot out, spraying blood everywhere.

The sharp, yowling gurgle soothed Cyrus’ mood like a balm.

But Neb still had enough presence of mind to send his minions at him as a last, spiteful act.

Unfortunate.

For him.

 _Turn Undead_.

The child ghosts were too empowered to burst into smoke this time, being full wraiths rather than mere apparitions, but he didn’t need them to. That they fled, flew and cowered from him was enough. Cyrus used the respite to turn his power inward one more time, healing his stab wounds as best he could. As much as needed to be able to breathe again and pull himself back to his feet. Even when he was standing again he had to catch himself on the nearest surface a couple of times lest he fall again. His insides felt like they would fall apart, so badly his natural regeneration had been overtaxed.

His eyes he didn’t bother with at all.

Yet.

Before him, Neb was crawling away, wallowing and gasping wetly.

Cyrus strode for him, took him by the scruff and hurled him through the air violently enough to smash back-first into the staircase with rib-crushing force. Then, when the killer was about to fall to his knees and face, Cyrus drove one of the iron spikes that had once been part of the traps through his shoulder, pinning him to the wooden boards behind.

Then he did the same with a second and third, one right through his other shoulder and the third though his knee this time.

Neb screamed and hacked blood and tears, but Cyrus had no mercy for him. The only thing that bothered him about that whole situation, his own terrible state aside, was the fate that would befall this monster once he’d killed him at last. The same fate that chaotic evil people generally shared, to reform in the Abyss as a larva and essentially start on the path to demonhood, possibly becoming even worse and more powerful than he was now if something didn’t kill or eat him first.

As he ripped Neb’s soul-pearl-filled pouches, belts and even upper clothing off him, Cyrus’ lips curled into something as ugly as his feelings on that particular topic, then his face blanked and right fist clenched.

Neb. Child killer. Planeswalker originally from… Mystara. Ended up in Sigil through whatever chain of events where he went to Lothar, Master of Bones, asking for information on a means to gain powers over undead. Got given the “key” to a Portal that led to some dark place where the would-be killer met some… creature. It looked as if someone had taken a man and squeezed him until all the light was wrung out like water, leaving only the deepest of darkness. It had the form of a large man – gaunt as though from a long illness – who had never experienced light. The being carried no weapon and made no move to strike, yet there was something inherently threatening about him. It was gaunt and angular, almost shadowy and ethereal. Eyes, dark and piercing.

Tenebrous, it called itself.

Tenebrous, who found him bizarre and obsessed enough with a rarely pursued avenue of necromancy to empower him with this strange talent over necrotic energy, despite not being any sort of mage.

Tenebrous, whose mark on Neb’s soul was the shape of a skull atop a rod.

The symbol of that supposedly long-dead Demon Lord and Undeath God known as Orcus.

Orcus. Tenebrous was Orcus.

Orcus was alive. Or at least not entirely dead. Undead. Possibly. Somehow.

What was he even supposed to do with _this_ information?

Cyrus’ right fist clenched, then the entire hand relaxed only for fingers to curl like a claw, going stiff…

The dwarf ripped through Neb’s torso, claw-like fingers going under ribs and diaphragm, then up through the lung until they curled like a vise around that thing called heart.

Neb stiffened and threw his head back with a croaking, stammering cry/gasp/gurgle, the last struggle before death descended and left a limp shell behind-

_Heal._

-only to gasp painfully and grab, claw uselessly at Cyrus’ hand and bracer as the dwarf flooded him with healing power, never taking his arm out of his chest, grip tight around his heart even as the flesh tried to heal around it.

 ** _Murder/not-death/blissful-anticipation_** had well and truly lit up with light at last. That yellow, glaring thing that could not be mistaken for anything other than _terror/terror/terror._

Yes. That was a good and _proper_ sort of light.

“The _just_ thing in this situation would be for me to inflict upon you every single act of harm you inflicted on these, your victims.” Cyrus’ voice was flat and he knew he made for an ugly sight, battered and bloodied all over and red and pale ooze dripping from his eye sockets. “Threefold, since that seems to be a theme.” He squeezed Neb’s heart – it caused him to hack and scream, flail and heave uselessly – and drove yet another iron spike into him, through his belly this time. Slowly, so that his healing of him would not be offset. Much. “But since that would only further traumatise these poor children sealed in those pearls of yours, all I’m going to say is this.” He grabbed him by the hair to make him face him and bent forward then, until their noses nearly touched and he could face his eyes with his own, useless ones. Enough of his power had filled the monster for him to turn it from _bright/healing/life_ to _you/all-that-you-are/ **mine**_ and suddenly he could see everything Neb was, all the way down to the chains and hooks holding his soul anchored to everything-that-is-and-ever-was-in-the-multiverse. “For all that you have done, **_be no more_** _._ ”

In one move, Neb’s heart was ripped out and tossed aside like trash and the Dagger of Bone took its place. The Dagger of Bone that then came around in an arc and cut **DEATH** into him, one straight, horizontal line that severed his mind from his voice, his head from his neck, his life from his body and his soul from everything.

Right then and there, Cyrus Anwar watched as Neb the child killer disappeared from the multiverse entirely. Watched as Neb the child killer died. Finally.

Completely.

It was the young dwarf’s deepest, most conflicting suspicion, this. That he could go and…

And…

Hypothesis confirmed, Cyrus thought emptily.

Odds of death: 55%

The child spirits burst from the pearls in the satchels around him or scattered on the basement floor. They smiled in relief and gratitude at him and started to fade, welcoming the release of death as they drifted into the ethereal plane and then beyond, into the mind-numbing Fugue Plane that awaited the dying. That stop along the way where they could all be calm and still of feeling, waiting for someone to come and retrieve them.

Odds of death: 64%.

They disappeared one by one.

77%.

One by one by one.

90%

Cyrus allowed himself to fall on his back under the weight of fatigue, blood loss, blindness and the pain he felt all over. He smiled resignedly as he watched the children finally go on their way and unwittingly provide a perfect trail to him. Trail for whatever it was that kept trying to snuff him out so that the cosmos could finally rid itself of him, for whatever reason.

94~~/-/`!

The last children faded blissfully. He had not the heart to tell them that even where they were going they risked being spirited away by demons against their will. He had even less heart to think of what this would do to Father.

At least this was a good thing to accomplish, before whatever happened… happened.

Odds of death: 90%

85%

0%

Cyrus Anwar lied there and stared blindly at nothing.

Odds of death: 0.

Even with some of his wounds still open and bleeding outside and in, even blind, even with the unfinished business of that child in the Resilient Sphere outside, his odds of death had just vanished entirely.

What…

He lied there for minutes, breathing tightly as his regeneration battled his unseemly state back into some imitation of health. He lied there, disbelieving that he had somehow caught another lucky break. He hadn’t even figured out what had happened last time.

This… this was the second time. He hesitated to form a hypothesis without a pattern, without at least three incidences of this same sort happening but…

It was some outside influence. Something. Someone, quite possibly.

Something or someone was hiding him, or masking him or otherwise doing… whatever it or they were doing.

The dwarf pulled himself up by the handle of the cupboard under the stairs, feeling like he ought to have experienced some chill or other sensation reminiscent of someone walking over his grave. He felt nothing, besides the deep aches and the itching in his eye sockets that let him know they had started to regrow, finally. Not that he had will enough to ponder that.

The cosmos thought he was something that needed eradication to the point where it turned a blind eye even to the supposed greatest of sinners so it could… try to find and snuff him out. And now, there were hints that certain… _certain_ _parties_ were likely hiding him from that. From…

For whatever reason. Whatever agenda. Agenda he hadn’t been consulted on.

He didn’t need to think long to know what the most likely nature of the reasons behind _that,_ in this universe where status quo ruled and any victory for the forces of Common Sense never scored anything but a passing victory.

Cyrus Anwar stood in the middle of the dark, bloody basement that reeked of death and suffering, triumphant, his foe broken at his feet, but his thoughts were awhirl and his victory tasted like ash.

He only snapped out of his… – _shock? Something else?_ – when _frantic/annoyed/relieved,_ a soul not belonging to any of the denizens of the slum around him, entered his range and ran straight for the Resilient Sphere still outside. A Flaming Fist patrolman, the same one who’d been there to see him suddenly charge off, had just skidded into range from around the nearest bend of the serpentine street.

The dwarf sighed and reached up to rub his eyes, then thought better of it lest he damage them further and started climbing back upstairs. Staggered up the stairs really, for the first few steps, internal wounds and bleeding not entirely undone even then.

He needed a second opinion.

He thought to magic and how it provided methods to shield from all mind-affecting spells and spell-like abilities. He thought to a certain Level 8 spell that could do all of that at once. He thought of Gorion and how he had one active all the time. He thought about how Mystra could see into peoples’ heads despite all that. Perhaps even _because_ that.

The dwarf scowled and evened out his pace through sheer force of will.

He needed more power.

_He needed an alternative to Mind Blank._


	21. The Seedy Underbelly of Baldur’s Gate

Cyrus had almost been arrested on the spot when he emerged from the previously scream-filled homestead looking like gory death on two legs. He’d almost been attacked outright even. The Flaming Fist mercenary had balked, drawn his sword and looked about to rush between him and his Resilient Sphere.

Unfortunately for the man and the boy in the protective forcefield, the blind, gore-splattered dwarf was disturbed, achy and very, _very_ aware that he had just been stabbed over a dozen times. Stabbed over a dozen times because a fool of a boy had been skulking around at night aiming to sneak into the Umberlee Temple only to linger in a dark alley longer than he planned after he thought he saw something flying overhead. Which was probably Cyrus himself, but the dwarf so named felt in no way charitable enough to cut the fool boy any sort of slack for the minor part he played in his abduction, or anything else.

Oh no, there was no mood left to indulge in _any_ sort of nonsense. “Oh you poor boy… You are IN SUCH TROUBLE! What in all the planes were you thinking, child?! Gallivanting through the streets at night?!”

“What... but... but it wasn't my faul...”

“Oh no, you don't! If you want to play the odds, you had best be sure you take responsibility for yourself! The goddess of luck does not endorse DUMB luck or foolish risks! Your father is a priest of Tymora! Would you have me think he hasn’t explained this to you over and over?! I swear, if you were mine you’d be off to your room and never see the outside of it before you're four score and twenty!”

“But… I… I…awe…”

“Not another word, lad! The smiling lady condones adventure not blind stupidity! Why I ought to…”

Casson opened his mouth-

“Young man, the next thing out of your mouth had better be _silence_ or the words ‘Yes Sir!’ or so help me, I will put you over my knee!”

Casson gaped at him, stunned, then when he noticed the utterly livid glare Cyrus was sending him he shut his mouth, gulped and meekly said “Yes sir.”

Cyrus managed to hold his glare for a few more seconds, but then he sagged wearily and dismissed the Resilient Sphere with a brief wave of his hand, sighing. “Right then. Come over here and let me check on you properly then.”

That had been fifteen minutes ago and he _still_ hadn’t gotten around to actually doing that due to the Flaming Fist mercenary. Well, not from close up. The man had balked and hurried to keep the two as far apart as he could, denying him his intention to check on the lad on account of not taking him at his word. The dwarf looked too much like an insane murderer himself with that glare and all the blood on him, he said. Go figure. Cyrus _supposed_ he could probably have used one of the dozen other responses he’d lined up instead of going back downstairs, ripping Neb’s head off and coming back out to push the blood-seeping thing into the man’s arms as “evidence.” Unfortunately for the man’s currently upturned stomach, as he’d noted before Cyrus was in no mood to indulge any sort of extra nonsense.

Now he was being “escorted” both in front and behind by Flaming Fist mercenaries, the original one, Marvin, behind him with Casson – who kept staring at him thinking Cyrus couldn’t feel him doing it – and the other leading them to the Flaming Fist Headquarters in the city’s Southeast, a woman named Schael Corwin. She was broadcasting plenty of suspicion and outright mistrust. Not openly, but Cyrus had yet to run into anyone whose soul state was hidden from him. Well, except Torrin Ironstar but he wasn’t quite sure about him yet. Corwin also had some well repressed indignation over being assigned night time patrol duty but Cyrus could only guess at the reason. The other mercenary had treated her with deference and even gave her a verbal report when they met up, despite them being of apparently equal rank. Recent demotion then? There didn’t seem to be any probable cause for such a thing. The dwarf couldn’t see any arrogance or ambition in her, not ambition for its own sake at least, and all the deaths she’d inflicted had been against criminals or otherwise in the heat of fighting. Fairly expertly too. As far as law enforcers went, she was among the cleanest he’d met so far. Perhaps that was the reason? The Flaming Fist had some rather serious corruption issues going on at the moment.

Still, as much as Cyrus would have liked to know if and how Angelo Dosan might have been behind her predicament, that was just one of many things on Cyrus’ mind as he walked down the street, and not even the most important. No, somewhat older matters weighed on him, chief among them the confusion over why his odds of dying hadn’t shifted when he made the Teleport scroll back at the Friendly Arm. Granted, he’d used five charges from Father’s Staff of… Circumnavigation? It was a good enough name for a Staff of the Magi with such an unusual spell set, Levitate instead of Web, Etherealness instead of Planeshift and, a pleasant and convenient surprise despite the lower arcane circle, Overland Flight instead of Monster Summoning IX. Easily the most useful spells among the schools Father was barred from. If Gorion had had it during the ambush, they’d have escaped easily or more likely won outright.

The odd foursome emerged from the decrepit alleys onto one of Baldur’s Gate main streets, but Cyrus didn’t pay that much mind even though he had to tune out the rapping that the two human’s metal boots started to make on the cobblestone. Not a difficult task, especially compared to ignoring the incessant itch in his eye sockets.

Why _didn’t_ the act of scribing a 5-th circle spell cause a reaction? If his theory about Mystra’s increased attention was true then it explained why he didn’t feel anything amiss when he cast Make Whole and Fabricate the day prior, but the Teleport scroll had come _after_ the revelation of Elminster’s daughter and Mystra’s subsequent involvement.

Cautiously, the dwarf built the matrix for Clairvoyance in his mind and then psionically grabbed the Weave and formed it into the proper shape.

The invisible magical sensor appeared around the corner of the home they passed through. Cyrus didn’t get any feedback from it – he’d have had to be connected to the Weave for that, another spell to add to the list of those he had to psionically duplicate – but it didn’t matter. He only wanted to see if the odds of his death would mount again and they hadn’t.

How curious and unhelpful.

Over the next few minutes Cyrus repeated the experiment half a dozen times, this time merely casting Greater Magic Weapon over and over on his sword and the two magic stones he palm-spun as he walked. All entirely Weave-based and yet the odds of his death stayed null.

What had he gotten himself into? And could whatever it was not be bothered to conceal him or whatever it was doing while he was fighting that insane creature in the slums? Or did combat somehow make it harder to do for some obscure reason?

He supposed he was about to find out.

Cyrus Anwar suddenly came to a halt in the middle of the footway, causing Marvin and Casson to almost bump into him. He ignored both of them, looking instead down at the ground. Or, rather, the slithering combination of _hunger/darkness/madness_ that had just entered his range up ahead.

“Hey! A little warning!” demanded Marvin the Mercenary. “People are walking here! Hells, _you_ should be walking!”

Cyrus continued to ignore him and kept watching the soulless pustule coming towards them from underground.

“I hope you have an explanation for your sudden halt, sir,” Corwin said curtly, arm on the hilt of her sword.

“I feel like death,” the dwarf said flatly, sniffing the air. “I _smell_ like death, after a fashion.”

“You stopped in the middle of the road because _you smell like death_ ,” Marvin repeated incredulously, oblivious to the menace that was almost upon them.

“That’s right. Also,” the dwarf suddenly exploded into motion, leaping in a whirl and nailing the man behind him in the chestplate with a double kick that sent the mercenary flying “Carrion Crawler,” he finished as he landed. Then he grabbed a fear-frozen Casson under an arm and jumped away just as the sewer grate beneath his feet blew upwards, smashed through by a monstrosity with the appearance somewhere between centipede covered in pus-spilling boils and tentacle monster.

Cyrus landed on the other side of the road the moment the aberration realized the failure of its ambush.

“By the Gods!” Corwin cried, drawing her sword.

“Umberlee’s salty trench!” Marvin cursed. Unfortunately, even though he was no slower to the draw than Corwin he was already on the ground and, more importantly, within lunging distance of the monster, something said creature realized as well.

“Argh!” Marvin cried out, trying and failing to roll away from the monster. The 5-meter-long crime against nature emerged fully from the sewer opening and sprung right for him, and though it largely missed him it easily coiled like the arthropod it resembled and nailed him across the front with three of its eight tentacles as it turned. “Curse, y-yo-“ the man choked on his words and fell paralysed by the secretions on the tentacle prods, easy pickings for the large, chitinous, yellow aberration.

Which was when Corwin charged shield-first into its front section from the side, crushing an eyestalk and knocking it away from her fellow, or at least drawing its attention.

From what Cyrus could tell at least. He couldn’t exactly _see_ properly at the moment.

Fortunately, for most things he didn’t need to.

 _Haste_.

Corwin, who’d been about to try and block the crawler’s tentacle swipe with her shield, suddenly doubled up in speed and expertly deflected the attack instead, swinging her sword and cutting two tentacles off for good measure. The carrion crawler arched backwards like an injured cat but it didn’t sound like one, skittering and clipping its mandibles as its tentacled face hissed and chittered. It would have been the perfect opening for an attack on the vulnerable underbelly but Corwin chose instead to hover protectively over her fallen and paralyzed comrade.

The moment loomed.

_Planar trait: non-gravitic._

Weightlessness settled upon him as he overlapped his Astral Realm upon the Prime Material.

There was a reason he made it to Baldur’s Gate in six hours despite how the basic spell of flight should have taken ten or twelve. Quite simply, Cyrus cheated.

The blind dwarf flew upwards, then when he was above the monster he waited for the right moment – it came when the crawler decided to grapple with the woman instead of swipe or spit its paralytic venom at her – and reversed direction, hurtling straight for it as fast as he could.

He slammed into the back of the aberration feet first – the monster shrieked like a thousand chittering bugs and arched its body just as he wanted – then he swooped up, locked his arms around its chitinous neck and, leaning on his power of Flight for the proper leverage, suplexed the thing right into the stone-cobbled road, face-first.

Thanking you kindly Thearabho for teaching wrestling so well. The man was getting a hug whenever Cyrus dropped by next.

Half the crawler’s teeth – sharp fangs all – got knocked loose or outright flew out from the impact. More importantly, the creature was stunned and easy to roll over, insofar as a 5-meter chitinous worm bug could be considered easy to move at all crawling and writhing aimlessly. The dwarf pushed it off him, flew to his feet, landed next to the monster’s head and drew Sightless in the same move, then marshalled his weight and strength to cut the thing’s head off with one, clean chop.

The front-most section of the carrion crawler burst free of the rest of its body, then in a display of macabre fortune it landed on the side and actually rolled a few times, finally falling flat at Casson’s feet.

Stillness descended and silence fell.

Then the boy fell on his bottom and bent to the side, emptying his stomach.

During the next couple of minutes, Cyrus took advantage of Corwin’s attention being taken by her fellow Flaming Fist to finally give Casson that proper health scan he’d been meaning to. It only confirmed that he was fine save for a bump on the head, though the shock of the gory battle, the realization that he’d nearly died (twice) and the horrible stench of the monster sprawled in the middle of the road played their part as well.

“There now, lad,” Cyrus said softly, on one knee and rubbing the boy’s back while sending small traces of healing energy into him.

Casson shuddered and retched again in spite of it.

The dwarf smiled lopsidedly, rueful. “It’s different when you’re conscious for it, isn’t it? Almost dying.”

“Please tell me you have a way to make me forget tonight every happened,” the boy croaked.

“That would only mean you’ll revert to thinking night-time wanderings are a good idea,” the dwarf said flatly.

Casson moaned piteously.

“Then you’ll be back to thinking you’d be able to sneak into the Water’s Queen’s House without Umberlee’s clergy killing you on sight.”

The child groaned and wiped his mouth, sick and tired both literally and figuratively, but he didn’t say any more foolish things so Cyrus counted that as a win.

Cyrus stood and gave the area a once over, making sure no other souls were nearby other than the three with him and the residents of the various homes around them. Then, since he was quite simply _done_ with all this nonsense, he decided it just wasn’t in his best interest to wait for his eyes to regenerate naturally. Unfortunately, curing blindness and deafness wasn’t something he’d practiced. Not so unfortunately, his inherent regeneration meant that he didn’t need to know that specialised miracle as long as he could take that regeneration and overcharge it.

The dwarf called forth almost every shred of his power in two, bright, misty spheres above his palms, then he pressed them against his eyes.

The itching in his eye sockets escalated to a low burn, but instead of three or four hours for his eyes to recover, they healed in the same number of minutes.

When it was over, Cyrus blinked owlishly to adjust to being able to see again, then he swayed on his feet, feeling an unwelcome weariness settle over him. Like he hadn’t eaten in days, not that he was that well acquainted with starvation considering how well Gorion always took care of him. But he’d always have that memory of Khelben finding him in the Candlekeep catacombs and separating him from the Cursed Tome of Everything. The dizzy spell was the same, and that darkness encroaching on his vision familiar.

He willed it off and – _Prestidigitation to clean up the new gore and filth from everywhere_ –reached into the Bag of Holding he had tied to his belt. Gorion had insisted he fill it with all essentials and take it with him. Essentials like the bar of dried rations he pulled out of it. Cyrus ate it quickly, vine leaf wrapping included, and felt a bit more dwarven afterwards.

He came to his full senses to see Corwin looking at him oddly from where she crouched next to her still paralyzed brother-in-arms. More immediately concerning was that Casson had huddled next to him and was basically hugging himself while looking hungrily at the last ration bite. Cyrus blinked at him, chewing slowly and faintly amazed at the oy being capable of feeling hunger after puking his guts out and with the deathly stench of that thing still permeating the air. Then he sighed, pulled out another ration and handed it over. “That there is Bentley Mirrorshade’s own recipe, lad, so be sure to mention him in your prayers to the Smiling Lady, eh?” He wasn’t even joking, making rations that did their job _and_ were tasty was hard work that even Imoen had never mastered.

The boy nodded furiously and proceeded to seemingly inhale the bar, though he did take the time to cast the vine leaves aside. Ah, children’s whims. Cyrus wondered what his life would have been like if he’d been able to feel them.

Probably a lot harder on Gorion. Then again, maybe not.

Setting those thoughts aside, the dwarf ate the last piece of his own ration and went over to the fallen man to heal his paralysis under Corwin’s wary permission. He didn’t actually figure out how to do that either, but he _did_ manage to give the man’s fortitude the boost it needed for Marvin to recover on his own.

Then, Cyrus walked over to the sewer opening and gazed down into its dark depths. Or, well, grey depths since he could see in the dark just fine now that his eyes were healed, even if darkvision came in black and white.

“What _is_ this thing?” Casson asked from where he’d walked to stand near the monster. He looked like he was seriously contemplating poking it with a stick. Or a toe, since he lacked one.

“Carrion Crawler,” Cyrus answered, not looking away from the sewer opening and ignoring the stench coming out of it. It wasn’t any worse that the foul odour of death given off by the monster itself. “A burrowing aberration from the Far Realm, the plane of madness. It generally scavenges the dead but it will prey on the living occasionally as well, especially when summoned and commanded to do such things by a capable enough spell caster as happens to be the case here.”

“Wait, what?” Marvin rasped, still sluggish but now able to stand.

“Not as eloquently as I would have put it but pertinent,” Corwin added, walking over to stand next to the dwarf. The woman seemed to think and her soul light wavered between suspicion and discretion. “Citizens have been randomly disappearing from this section of the city over the past few weeks. Initially the disappearances were scattered but lately people have been disappearing from the streets of the city every night. We have actually been scouring the city trying to find the culprit, but so far to no avail. People have begun to get scared, and very few are willing to leave their homes at night.” The woman grimly looked from the sewer opening to the monster and back. “I suppose now we know the one responsible.” And the suspicion emerged stronger than ever. “Tell me, though, since it does beg the question. How claim you to know the answer to what the Flaming Fist has been working day and night to find out?”

The question was one he expected but while he never lied that didn’t mean he answered every question someone posed.

Instead, the dwarf gave the three humans there a roaming look, re-read the murderous history of the aberration that lied dead in the middle of the road and nodded to himself, then reached up and sent a pillar of pyrotechnic sparks into the sky.

“What are you doing?” Corwin demanded from where she’d leapt back the moment she saw him using magic.

Cyrus could have told her many things in response. Like how he _did_ just go through a night-time sprint, saved more than one life and also happened to be in the unenviable position of having been stabbed to near death several times tonight. He also could have explained how and why he decided that he was simply _done_ with this reactionary nonsense. But he hadn’t been asked about any of that, so he just said “Sending a signal to any other Flaming Fist nearby.”

Then he jumped down the hole.

“-.  .-“

“So let me see if I have this down correctly. You jumped into the sewers in the middle of the night, fought your way through half a dozen monstrous spiders of three different kinds, killed a… tribe of kobolds including their ‘god’.”

“Actually a shaman,” Cyrus noted from where he was sitting on a stool and prying off whatever pieces of acid-corroded splint mail still hung off him. The gathered people gave him looks of various sorts though, as far as he could tell from their souls since he wasn’t really looking at them, so he decided to elaborate. “I tossed a fireball at them as I passed by.”

“Right, so you fought your way through half a dozen monstrous spiders and then killed half a tribe’s worth of kobolds _as you passed by_ , then you retraced the path of the carrion crawler to what turned out to be an ogre mage summoner who’d been using the sewer system as a lair from which he sent out carrion crawlers nightly to kidnap people for treasure.”

“That was the essence of his monologue, yes,” the dwarf confirmed, dropping yet another bit of metal on the pile that used to be his suit of armour.

Officer Scar of the Flaming Fist shook his head. “At that point the ogre mage attacked and unleashed two more crawlers on you and the two Flaming Fists that followed you down there. You focused on the crawlers to take them out before they could paralyze anyone, which allowed the caster to get off a fireball – which burned everyone but you– and a hail of acid arrows – that missed everyone _but_ you.”

“Don’t remind me,” Cyrus grunted, tossing out the latest bit of metal from his now useless armour and glaring at the pile of metal disgustedly. Hell of a time for enemy casters to get smart and target his equipment rather than him directly. “This is the second armour that didn’t live to see its second day. One more and this is going to become a truly aggravating theme.” And this one didn’t have the excuse of poor iron either.

Scar shook his head, increasingly baffled. “Irritated by the damage to your equipment, you then proceeded to…” The man paused, blinking, before continuing to read with a distinct hint of incredulity. “To tackle the ogre mage, grab him by the scruff of his leather tunic and fly him out of the sewers through the nearest opening – incidentally shattering his collarbone against the side of the pothole edge – after which you flew straight up another 20 meters, spun once to gather momentum and hurled the ogre mage straight at the ground, which concluded with the creature broken and dead in the middle of the road.”

“Seems to be a theme with him,” Marvin muttered from his corner. “He left the kid and the crawler in the middle of the road too.”

“Maybe he should have left _you_ on the side of the road then,” Casson muttered from the small stool next to Cyrus.

Officer Scar sighed, rubbing circles into his temple where he sat at his desk, setting Corwin’s report of her night shift aside and taking up Marvin’s. His rumpled state was indicative of having been roused too early but he was alert enough despite that. “So, putting aside the misunderstanding that preceded all this, you undertook the chain of events I just described _after_ hunting down an elusive serial child killer and rescuing his latest intended victim. Something that involved a life and death battle with the enslaved spirits of 32 children, an engagement during which you were cut, skewered, stabbed, slashed – once even across both eyes which should have left you permanently blind, barring clerical intervention – and otherwise cut up…”

“… 15 times,” Cyrus supplied helpfully. Then, when everyone from the secret evil turncoat to the second-in-command of the Flaming Fist stared at him, he shrugged. “I regenerate.”

“Right then,” Scar uttered, not knowing what else to say. Cyrus sympathised with him. The craggy-faced man – _Harold Loggerson_ – was a firm believer in the law and devoted to the ideals of civilization and, more than that, his commander Duke Eltan above and beyond even his own life. Scar’s history of kills and near-deaths was vivid even though his spirit wasn’t particularly bright. Neutrally-aligned souls were like that, Cyrus had noticed. Constricted and dimmer than they should be as a result of the self-rejection inherent in living by the idea of balance between good and evil. But he wasn’t going to hold that against a human when the gods themselves worked by the same fallacy more often than not.

“There is something in all of this that just doesn’t make sense,’ Scar finally said, dropping Marvin’s report on the existing pile of paperwork. “How did you know to go and _do_ all that?”

“Yes, how _did_ you know?” The Flaming Fist officer who ostensibly had the night shift asked, voice a perfect blend of curiosity and polite suspicion. “To hear Marvin say it, you were just walking along the road in the middle of the night only to suddenly stiffen and charge off in a random direction like a bat out of Baator.”

Cyrus looked at the questioner for a long, long moment.

Then he hummed, pulled his pipe from his bag, lit it, drew a long pull of smoke and, after ignoring the glares and Corwin’s protests in particular over the disrespect he was showing Scar in his own office, exhaled the smoke straight in the direction of the one who’d asked him the question and answered Angelo Dosan completely seriously. “I’m a Bhaalspawn. I just know these things.”

“-. .-“

They wanted to arrest him, obviously. Especially the lower-ranked and excitable. Like Marvin.

_Try it, lad, and I’ll turn you into a lemming._

It was what Imoen would have said anyhow. And though he couldn’t cast Polymorph, Rodent Form was just one of many interesting spells he’d acquired recently. Rhialto’s spellbook had been useful like that.

_How can you just say that so easily?_

That had been Corwin. A truly honest person, Cyrus thought as he beheld the breaking dawn. Almost as honest as him.

_Because having murderers or madmen for parents wasn’t a punishable offense in the Lords’ Alliance, last I heard._

The dwarf looked away from the sunrise and slowly descended, resolving to acquire a timepiece at some point. He’d almost run late to his meeting. Not that the one he was meeting knew of the meeting but he was going to be meeting him anyway.

_Now if you’ll excuse me, I am on a timetable so I simply must be off._

Cyrus touched down lightly on the roof and inspected the grounds of the estate he was on. It wouldn’t do to be spotted by any roaming guards or early-working servants.

_You can’t expect to walk out after just blurting something like that!_

Scar had cut in at that point, dismissing the increasingly agitated Marvin and asking Cyrus what his plans were, particularly if he intended to be in the city for the foreseeable future.

_I’m afraid not. I only arrived last evening and expect to be gone by afternoon. I have some matters to see to, a fair bit further south._

Angelo Dosan’s nearly lightless spirit had churned viciously even though he didn’t show anything openly. No doubt he would be reporting him to Sarevok immediately. Possibly had already, in the time since he left the Flaming Fist Headquarters and went invisible to avoid any chance of Angelo trying to ambush him or send stalkers after him. Cyrus didn’t mind people knowing he’d been in the city. He counted on it actually. All the better for Sarevok not to expect him to be anywhere near Nashkel or Cloakwood in the near future. The dwarf hadn’t intended these outcomes at all when he decided to fly over but he was going to make the best of the random encounters.

_Please wait here for a time, then. There are some loose ends that must be settled before you leave._

Which was another way for Scar to say he was getting paid. A lot. A thousand and a half gold for the ogre mage, two and a half thousand for Neb, and an additional bounty of three thousand gold paid by the Sashenstar family for discovering the fate of their daughter, one of many whom the ogre mage’s crawlers had claimed. He would also have gotten Neb’s soul pearls, which Scar’s men had gathered up along with everything else relevant in that homestead. But he gave those to Corwin and told her to offer them as sacrifice to the nearest Ilmater temple since she was a member of that particular congregation. In all, even without those gems his new fortune added up to seven thousand, enough to buy a high-end house within Baldur’s Gate’s inner walls and still have some left over.

Still nowhere near the amount it would take to buy or build something as opulent as the estate he was standing on top of, but that wasn’t what he was here for. Speaking of which, it was about time. Early enough for some measure of privacy but not too early for the hour to seem too ungodly.

Cyrus lifted off the roof, descended until he reached the window he needed, checked to make sure it really was the right room, then settled in his position and rapped on the window with the tip of his pipe stem.

Two minutes and several raps on the glass later, the rumpled but alert lord of the manor threw his window open. “Either this is a prank, a damned bird or a really unimaginative assassination attempt,” he muttered and stuck out a heavy crossbow, loaded for bear. “Who’s out there!?”

“Greetings.”

“Tyr’s bollocks!” Entar Silvershield jumped, startled oath spilling from his lips as he backed away as much as he could, pointing his crossbow straight at where the dwarf stood horizontally on the wall, the man having missed him completely despite that the dwarf hadn’t been trying to hide at all. Within the room, Cyrus sensed the man’s wife coming awake suddenly, soul light flaring in fright. “How the… Who in the Abyss are you!?” The man demanded.

“I am Cyrus Anwar, son of the Sage Gorion of Candlekeep and technical Bhaalspawn.”

The crossbow bolt smacked him in the forehead.

And that was why he’d taken to smoking his Pipe when meeting important people. Protection from Arrows was a matter of life and death.

Rubbing at his bruised skull with the back of his pipe hand, Cyrus used the other one to hold up Eddard’s cloak clasp along with the letter he’d had the younger man write his father the previous night. “I come in peace,” the dwarf drily told the trigger-happy man before he had a chance to fully reload. “Really.”


	22. Interlude: The Bright Side of Baldur’s Gate (1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was going to wait until I completed this, but what the hell, have the first half of the interlude.

The sprawling, organized chaos that was the city of Baldur’s Gate unfolded down below, a massive conglomeration of roads, buildings, narrow alleys and the occasional greenery. For all that druids claimed that civilization was a blight upon nature and as far removed from the wild as it could be, the port city certainly looked like a jungle from on high. Or perhaps a particularly dry swamp, sea-facing docks notwithstanding, since jungles still had the occasional clearing and wide open space. The only thing that even remotely qualified as a wide open space here, however, was the appropriately named The Wide, Baldur’s Gate massive open marketplace. And even that place was covered in a myriad of trader stalls, craft halls and tents of various purposes, leaving only a criss-crossing network of paths for people and wagons to mill through.

But that was a sight she would not be enjoying much for once. In fact, she would have to skip her habitual flyover of Ramazith Flamesinger’s tower as well. Hopefully the self-proclaimed “sage extraordinaire” would not choose that day of all days to do anything outlandish or offensive to both individuals and the populace at large.

The starling flapped her wings and abandoned her languid circling of The Wide, turning westward. The wind was with her today, allowing her to reach her destination a couple of minutes earlier than the requested time. This, unfortunately, worked against her for once due to how well known she was for adhering to punctuality, so she was forced to circle the area twice before she descended and approached her designated entry point. Fortunately, all seemed to otherwise be in order. The lady of the manor opened the window for her at just the right time, ostensibly to air out the room. It was a simple matter to flap and glide her way down the staircase from there, all the way down to the main sitting room.

The starling landed on the table, a round but wide thing, to go with the larger than usual gatherings that the manor lord often hosted, and inspected the large sheet of 2 x 2 foot paper spread across it for a few moments. Then she jumped down and, when her clawed feet touched the floor next to where the only other woman in the room stood, the bird activated her spell of polymorph and once again resumed her natural form with a flash of light and a burst of spellsmoke

Liia Jannath shook her head to fan out her black hair slightly, then she nodded to Moruene and faced her fellow Grand Dukes. “Eltan. Belt.” She greeted and nodded to them in turn, getting the same from them. No more than that, though, since the two men were both reading a letter. That left one. “Entar.”

The lord of the manor grunted, not looking away from the target of his suspicious glare.

Well used to Entar Silvershield’s rough demeanor, the woman turned to see what was no doubt the reason the man had called a secret meeting of the Grand Dukes so very suddenly that morning.

Liia Jannath found herself pursing her lips in thought at what she found. And blinking. There, sitting on the couch located on the far side of the room was a dwarf. That alone would not have necessarily told her much, but a few things did stand out. The dwarf’s clothes were rumpled, dirty and outright eaten through in places. By acid, among other things, if she knew her chemical and spell reactions right, which she did. Evidence of being cut through were clear around his collarbones and side as well, despite the mending job that had been done on them. But the clothes were just one of three strange things there.

The second was the utterly massive arcane tome the dwarf was immersed in. A black, rune-studded book of spells that forced the woman to smother a sudden impulse to rush over and demand to take a closer look at it. Liia Janmath consoled herself with the knowledge that Moruene was in much the same position as her, from what she could see of her face.

The third thing was the group of seven – seven! – guards that surrounded the couch the dwarf was seated on, all of them with their hand tightly gripping the hilts of their blades. Granted none of them had been drawn, but still!

Blinking, the mage addressed the manor owner again. “Well, here we are, all of us. May I finally know why you suddenly called this meeting and why we aren’t holding it in the Ducal Palace?” She motioned in the direction of the seven guards. “Not to insinuate anything about the loyalty of your guard force but their presence does rather defeat the purpose of a _secret_ meeting of peers.”

She got her answer via Belt and Eltan since Entar seemed determined not to break off his unblinking glare no matter what happened. Even though the one he was glaring at wasn’t even returning it.

Shaking her head slightly, Liia Jannath accepted the letter from her compatriots and gave it a quick skim, then blinked, frowned and read it more thoroughly.

_Father,_

_There are sharks in the water._

_I am ashamed to admit that I nearly fell prey to them twice if not for the intervention of outside factors. Factors like the person who took it upon themselves to deliver this message to you. Like those who’ve uncovered the reasons behind the recent troubles in our region. Or perhaps I should say reason, singular._

_The things I have learned and the depths of treachery being undertaken even as I write this are staggering. Perhaps that is why they never occurred to me, at least in part._

_But I have chosen not to write them here. Not for any worry caused by the one bearing this missive but because I would rather discuss them with you face to face._

_This note is just half of the package being delivered to you. The other is a scroll bearing an arcane mark. The mechanics are not entirely clear to me but I have chosen to take the person who made it at their word in regards to its purpose._

_Simply put, it is a beacon for a teleportation spell. Activation on your end will allow the paired scroll to home in on it and transport myself and a small number of others to you. In any other situation I would merely return with the caravan as originally planned, but after the ambush that gutted it and my guard force, not to mention what I now know, I dare not take the risk. Especially with what I have learned of these so-called bandits._

_I have given the bearer of this note a token you will recognize as further proof of its authenticity._

_Hopefully I shall see you, mother and Skie soon._

_Signed,_

_Eddard Silvershield_

Eyebrows high, the woman set the letter down on the table and spent the next few minutes working with her fellow mage, Eltan’s friend Moruene, on confirming the purpose of the 2 x 2 foot scroll. Soon enough the both of them confirmed that it was what the letter said it was and nothing else.

All throughout, Entar did not tear his mistrustful glare from the dwarf across the room. Dwarf who seemed content to ignore everyone and just read from his large spellbook.

“Alright, what am I missing?” Liia quietly asked the others when she got bored with the silence. “It is not our way to detain messengers, especially not with more than half a dozen heavily armed men at a time. And why is Entar glaring at him like he’s expecting him to cause mischief at any moment?”

She got a lot less of an answer than she wished but still more of a one than she expected. One which clarified some things and raised many more questions. From the bizarre manner in which the dwarf “approached” Entar that morning, to the somehow equally bizarre report that a harried Scar had hastened to give Eltan around the same time earlier that morning, when the dawn had barely broken

“So…” Liia said at length, not moderating her tone this time. “In essence, we have someone who set out, and _succeeded_ , in delivering a highly confidential message to one of us. _After_ he was sidetracked, twice, saving and alternatively avenging the lives of our subjects at great injury to himself. That same someone is now being detained under heavy guard for the high crime of… pointing out some very glaring holes in our security while accomplishing the aforementioned?”

Belt and Eltan grimaced, the latter more so than the former, while Entar just grunted again.

Liia shared a long-suffering glance with Moruene.

Honestly!

Then she sighed, shook her head and crossed the room.

The dwarf closed the book with a loud snap – it _disappeared into thin air_ – and slid off the couch, seemingly at ease in spite of the three men behind him and two pairs flanking the couch he’d been on, all armoured and armed to the teeth. “My lady,” the dwarf greeted her with a bow. A short one, between fellow guests as opposed to any sort of deference. “It is good to see one such as yourself grace this gathering.”

“One such as myself?” The mage asked, raising an eyebrow and crossing her arms. “Dare I ask?”

“I would never presume to decide what you should or should not do, madame.”

Liia gave herself a moment to marvel at his ability to say that with a straight face. “Quite,” she said drily. “Please elaborate then, if you would.”

“I mean only to say that I appreciate the presence and proximity of one with such kind inclinations and Common Sense.”

Some truly distinct noises of discontent came from behind her but she did not turn around.

The woman was very tempted to ask if he really meant that but something warned her away from that line of inquiry. “Truly?” Fortunately, she had another line just waiting in reserve. “Does that mean that you have _not_ enjoyed any kind inclinations and common sense in my absence? Surely not!”

Something in the dwarf’s eyes glittered. “I fear it is as you say. Though it may shame me to lean on the glow of your unbiasedness, your presence makes for a pleasant counterpoint to the undeserved suspicion I have been treated with since my arrival, as well as the attack on my person by the lord of the manor.”

“Attack!?” Entar burst.

“You shot me in the head.”

There was a pregnant pause.

Liia turned half-way to see behind her. The duke’s hands were by that point twitching as if… but no, he couldn’t really be labouring under the wish to throttle the one implied to be responsible for his son’s continued living, could he? “You intruded on my privacy and the privacy of my wife, coming in through our _bedroom window_ at an ungodly hour besides, like an assassin in the dead of night! You _stood horizontally on my wall_ and introduced yourself as-” the man cut himself off, breathing deeply.

The dwarf shrugged, pulled a meerschaum pipe from somewhere, conjured a small flame with a snap of his fingers, lit it and puffed on it a couple of times, then looked in the eyes of Entar Silvershield and said. “I introduced myself as Cyrus Anwar, the son of the Sage Gorion of Candlekeep and technical Bhaalspawn. Yes, I remember.”

Liia Jannath briefly wondered if she was dreaming.

Then Entar Silvershield’s seven guards moved as one, stepping back and drawing their swords, looking utterly startled but ready to slice and dice at the barest hint of hostility.

Oh dear.

The scene seemed frozen in time, with only the puffing pipe sketching any sort of movement in the air, even if by proxy via the smoke it gave off.

And… was that giggling? Yes, Moruene had definitely giggled just then.

After a tense few moments, Eltan sighed and lifted a hand to his forehead. “Gods. I thought Scar was exaggerating when he was talking about you but now I think he might have been downplaying everything instead.”

Entar grunted. “As fascinating as the conversation on the other end of that lead-in would surely be, let’s just get this over with.” He glared at the dwarf again. “I’m not letting you do _anything_ else until I have my son and heir in front of me.”

Liia thought to the massive arcane tome the dwarf had been reading when she came in, and the manner in which he apparently contacted Entar. She rather doubted there was any “letting” involved here.

“It’s not a matter of letting,” the dwarf said a moment after she had that same thought, using a gesture with his pipe to shape the smoke into an accurate image of the base formula for dimensional travel magic, which only she and Moruene recognized but which made the others tense regardless. “I could leave at any time no matter what other parties would have to say on the matter.” He gave the whole room a searching look, from the seven plate-wearing guards with swords drawn nearby, to the four Dukes themselves, then shrugged. “Not easily, but I could.”

The duchess refrained from pinching her nose. Apparently, there wasn’t any tact involved here either.

Really, it was like Entar Silvershield and this Cyrus Anwar were made for each other.

Sometime later they _finally_ had the beacon patterns laid out and ready for use. Not in the sitting room, but in the cellars. It wasn’t a mage’s workshop but it was spacious enough. Entar was also quite adamant about _not_ allowing unknowns to teleport into just any part of his home. Since Eddard wasn’t a mage himself, someone would have to be performing the spell and basically bringing him as an extra. The dwarf had supplied them a list of people they could expect in addition to Eddard and Jerrick, his apparently _only_ remaining Flaming Fist auxiliary. Nevertheless, all were acutely aware of the fact that Entar didn’t trust the dwarf’s word on principle. They were equally aware of the seven swords still drawn, two of which were within less than two feet of the seemingly unbothered dwarf. That said “guest” had refused to cease smoking when asked probably hadn’t helped Entar’s mood any.

Hopefully this would be all over soon.

Soon enough the symbols on the sheet of paper lit up a steady, grey-silver glow that barely thrummed. Reading the magic and confirming her prior deductions about the ingredients used, how they were mixed and the way magic was applied, Liia nodded and confirmed one last time. “It isn’t up to going through any anti-divination and conjuration wards without the conscious consent of the property owner, which has been provided, and it won’t last more than one use. I’ve seen better and _made_ better, but for a rush job it is sufficient to remove the destination error margin from the Teleport spell on the paired scroll.”

At Entar grudging nod, the dwarf pulled a round pebble out of his bag of holding and crushed it to dust. It gave off a certain glow under Liia’s mage sight as the conjured item was unmade, presumably along with its pair back at the Friendly Arm Inn, even if no tingle of magic was felt.

Barely two minutes later, the glow of the symbols flashed up in beams and the space above the sheet blurred and warped, leaving behind five people. Two half-elves Liia didn’t recognize, two humans one of whom she did recognize, and one gnome right in the middle whom she also recognized. Bentley Mirroshade, proprietor of the Friendly Arm.

There was a story behind that.

One that would have to wait, apparently.

For the moment the magical travel elapsed and the main passenger relaxed from the rigid posture he’d taken, he spoke. “Father, you’re still well. Thank the gods,” Eddard Silvershield breathed out in relief, implying some rather _alarming_ things about their degree of safety. “It worked. After the past few days I wasn’t sure what to…” He trailed off when his eyes roamed over to where his proven benefactor stood at almost literal swordpoint. “What’s going on here?!”

The two strangers’ hands went to their weapons but they made no other moves yet, thankfully.

“What…” Entar’s son uttered again, aghast. “The ones who repeatedly saved my life engineer a means for swift delivery of myself as well as critical information, and instead of honouring the relevant parties you have them detained! Father, how could you?!”

Perhaps it was strange to focus on it in that situation, but Liia couldn’t help notice how uncomfortably the young lord’s bodyguard was standing in the midst of that scene, scowling sourly.

Surprisingly, the uncomfortable situation was broken by the most unlikely of sources. Or perhaps _not_ unlikely at all.

“Lad,” Bentley Mirrorshade breathed after stepping around the two humans. He was looking at the dwarf that had started all this, incredulous. “What did you _do_?”

“I delivered the message as was the original plan,” Cyrus Anwar answered. The woman was surprised to see him smiling faintly, even as his tone stayed bland. Despite the way the situation had developed, he seemed visibly more content and peaceful than mere moments earlier. “I even managed to avoid being late.”

“That doesn’t answer my question!” The gnome snapped, hurrying over to him, giving the swordsmen arrayed around him a quelling look. “Wh-” He opened his mouth to say something else, only to falter. “What happened to you? Where’s your armour? And your clothes, they… are those _acid burns!?_ ” The last words turned into a shriek, derailing whatever argument the Silvershields would have gotten into.

Bizarrely, the dwarf only seemed to grow more and more at ease the more Bentley Mirrorshade spoke. Or, well, fretted. “Certain events occurred overnight but the culpable parties have been dealt with at no permanent damage to myself.”

“No permanent damage!” The gnome gasped, waving his hands up and down. “No _permanent_ damage! That still means anything could have happened! And your shirt, whatever mending job you did is… are those _stab marks_ above your shoulders?!”

Liia Jannath had to smother her amusement at the sight of the gnome fretting while over half a dozen people hovered around, armed to the teeth but suddenly not so sure they should be there “guarding” the comparatively massive dwarf.

“We’ll have time to go over it in detail later, I’m sure,” the dwarf said plainly. “As it is, this situation isn’t about me.” He paused. “Or it isn’t supposed to be.”

“Quite right,” Eltan interceded from the other side of the gathering, where he’d presided over the introductions with the other arrivals. Jerrick was Eddard’s bodyguard, the other two were half-elves named Khalid and Jaheira, a married couple apparently. Adventurers, by their getup. But Eltan was clearly getting into this. “The events and people responsible for what you see before you have, indeed, been dealt with. The ogre mage’s body has been removed from the middle of the road in the neighbouring district. And the remains of the kobold tribe and carrion crawlers that had been abducting and killing people out of the sewers are being cleaned up as we speak.” Liia beheld her fellow Duke and had to marvel at his ability to say that with a straight face. She marvelled even further when he maintained that straight face during what he said next. “Your friend weathered the fireballs and acid bath surprisingly well throughout. As for the child ghost-animating serial murdered that preceded that, there was, as was already noted, no lasting damage, as he was _only_ stabbed fifteen times.”

“You WHAT!?” Bentley Mirrorshade shrieked up at the younger dwarf.

“My second, Scar, got the impression this was normal?” Eltan asked the gnome. “I admit I was rather alarmed myself when I heard about your friend’s eyes being slashed out but they do seem to be just fine now.”

“You got your eyes slashed up! You-you, fifteen ti-, fifteen… Ooooh!” Bentley groaned, swooning with a hand on his chest and drooping forward, catching himself on the nearest surface which happened to be the dwarf’s taut abdomen. “Oooooh. Oh, my heart!”

“Is fine,” the dwarf said promptly. “As is the rest of you,” he added after a moment of study, smiling softly around his pipe. “The long night did you good.”

“This isn’t about my night! This is about _your_ night! Oh, Glittering Garl, why do I even bother?” the gnome looked up and demanded of the universe. Then he straightened and glared up at the dwarf again. “No wonder your father was so worried about you! You’re hopeless on your own!”

Bizarrely, that comment seemed to soften the dwarf’s countenance even further, somehow.

“So t-that’s w-why T-Torrin was a-al afret last night, mayhap?” the man, Khalid, asked his wife. It probably wasn’t meant for other ears, but Moruene had unobtrusively used her own magic to relay the speech to her and her fellows. As much as she liked to stay in the background, she was always on top of things.

“I am not sure,” Jaheira answered just as lowly. “The scope of his admittedly vague premonition was implied to have been rather more massive, and it seemed to be of an averted event as opposed to things that proceeded towards conclusion. And yet the time fits.”

So now it seemed that they were acquainted with some sort of seer as well? Or perhaps an adventuring priest that performed the occasional divination. The circumstances were a bit odd, however, as the words implied it had happened spontaneously and at night, possibly while this “Torrin” was performing his meditations.

“That’s it!” Bentley Mirrorshade shouted at the dwarf, out of patience. “You’re not allowed to leave my line of sight _or_ hearing range _or_ shouting distance _or_ whatever other boundaries I see fit to set down for the rest of the day!”

It was at that moment that Moruene couldn’t help it anymore and burst out laughing.

No one else did the same but that did not matter to the woman at all, as few things really did. Liia’s fellow mage laughed heartily, then wiped a tear and finally spoke for the first time since their gathering. “I’m sorry but I just don’t see it.”

“Pardon?” Belt asked, since Eltan already seemed to have guessed why she’d reacted overtly at last.

“I just…” Moruene chuckled. “He’s supposed to be a Bhaalspawn, a living, breathing boogeyman to scare children with, but I honestly don’t see it.” She addressed the dwarf directly. “Are you sure you’re one?”

“Don’t let him fool you,” Entar griped, pretending not to see his son’s scandalized look. “The world is rife with snakes, and devils are the best at looking innocent and charming. You of all people should know this.”

Moruene’s eyes tightened minutely at the backhanded insult.

But Belt cut in instead. “As true as that is, such people always have a tell that gives them away.” His eyes glowed white momentarily. “And yet the sight granted to me by the power of my God reveals none.”

“I wasn’t aware that his highness was being put on trial,” Eddard suddenly bit out, glaring at everyone in turn. “And if he was, I certainly hope we would have the courtesy of at least giving prior notice!”

His _highness?_

“I am not royalty,” the dwarf said before anyone else could cut in, sounding borderline exasperated. “How many times do I have to say it? I can understand the Candlekeep Watchers, they like to take their jokes as far as possible due to not having much else to do while on duty and weighed down by that politely grave mien they need to keep up, but everyone else?”

“With all due respect, sir, half of the pilgrims coming out of Candlekeep disagree,” the young man pressed, as straight-faced as Eltan had been minutes earlier. “And I do seem to recall that ‘Calimshan Nights’ became the accurate and expansive hit it did due to the author establishing a rapport with a visiting Pasha based almost entirely on her association with _you_.”

What was this, then? That book, and booklets containing individual stories, was already well known and the favourite topic of many people of all stripes of society. Liia had read and greatly enjoyed the tome herself, not just because of the sheer creativity involved in writing one thousand and one different stories, but for the ingenuous way in which they were all made part of a greater setting. Plus the not at all rare glimpses of deviousness, strategy and tactics that some of the tales revealed, as well as the insight into Calimshan politics and geography that had never before been seen outside the country itself. To say nothing of the ingenious uses of magic, especially purportedly weak spells and cantrips, that had even taught her a thing or two. And if nothing else, Pasha Hakim was directly credited for many of the ideas and information.

“You’ve been spending time with Imoen, I see,” the dwarf sighed fondly. “Don’t take anything she says at face value. As much as I love her, and I do love her completely, my little sister has a penchant for telling tall tales.”

His _sister_. The young but rapidly gaining fame author and bard of Candlekeep was his _sister?_

“Your _sister_?” Moruene asked, surprised.

“Well, not technically no,” the dwarf admitted, then shrugged the way he like to do. “But she may as well be.”

“Forget that!” Bentely Mirrorshade burst, too exasperated by the situation to care he was in the presence of the leaders of the entire region. “We weren’t finished talking!”

“I suppose not,” the dwarf agreed. “We were about to conclude the negotiations regarding my activities and comportment for the rest of the day.”

And didn’t that just sound official and high-strung, Liia thought.

“So we’re agreed then?” the gnome picked up the thread again, not willing to give up without some sort of verbal contract. It at least implied a measure of trust in the dwarf’s ability and willingness to keep his word if nothing else, Liia thought. That ought to smooth some of Entar’s ruffled feathers if nothing else did. “No sudden encounters, no random adventures. You’ll be within my line of sight, hearing range and/or shouting distance for the rest of the day until I have to teleport back to my Inn.”

Cyrus Anwar blinked down at him, puffed his pipe once and raised an eyebrow challengingly.

“…Please?” The gnome entreated. Begged, almost. “That was the plan anyway, I supply you with the materials you need for the scroll and you accompany me while I restock on that and whatever else today. Just… please don’t fight me on this? My heart wouldn’t take it!”

“Yes it would,” the dwarf answered, not unkindly. “It is a strong, healthy thing that will stay young for decades yet. Still!” he cut Bentley off before he could answer. “I think I now have a good enough frame of reference to know when and what feelings I should make allowances for. I would have to be evil or a fool to deride this emotional investment into my wellbeing you’ve developed despite the short time we’ve been acquainted.”

There was a story _there_ but Liia wondered if she’d ever learn it. This was _not_ the sort of sight she’d associated with the spawn of the God of Murder. Even _with_ the high number of them running around Faerun improving their chances, such as they were.

“Also, the trouble seemed to find me just fine on its own, at least as much as I went looking last night,” the dwarf mused, putting out his pipe and stashing it away so he could lay both of his hands on the gnome’s shoulders. The top half of Bentley’s upper body almost entirely disappeared under them. Then he smiled softly. “But alright. Let the rest of today be for you, you beautiful man.”

Bentley Mirrorshade turned a truly _strange_ set of colours then, green around the gills but incandescently red-faced at the same time, somehow. “D-don’t say such strange things!”

“A lost cause if ever there was one,” Entar grumbled, rubbing a hand over his face. And what he said next was, given the way the dwarf’s expression closed off, probably not the best thing if he actually hoped to hang onto his temper. “I swear, it’s like listening to one of those spacefaring aliens talking.”

“Speaking of aliens, did you know that spelljammer helms are instruments in the omnicidal plot by the Reigar to blow up all the Crystal Spheres as part of their latest Masterstroke and that you have a disguised spelljammer in your port right now?”

“Oh for, GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”


	23. Interlude: The Bright Side of Baldur’s Gate (2)

“I can’t believe you got us kicked out.”

“Yes you can and yes you do.”

“Ugh, it’s a figure of speech!”

Liia Jannath had to refrain from warbling in amusement at the groan of exasperation that escaped Bentley Mirrorshade. That she was mid-flight in her bird form helped only slightly with her self-restraint.

“Does this mean you are speaking to me again?”

“No.”

Cyrus Anwar turned to the half-elven woman next to him. “Isn’t a denial rendered self-defeating in this context if _spoken_ to the questioner?”

“Oh for crying out loud!” the gnome burst.

Liia Jannath decided to land on the eaves of the seamster’s workshop in order to avoid veering off due to the sheer hilarity embodied by the group she was following. She actually agreed with the dwarf to an extent. Considering that the gnome had adamantly refused to speak to him since dawn all through noon, it was not an unreasonable question. Doubly so since the gnome was riding on the dwarf’s right shoulder. Had been surveying and interacting with his surroundings from that vantage since less than an hour after Entar threw them out of his mansion early that morning.

This Cyrus Anwar apparently did not appreciate self-absorbed people almost stepping on the small man, accidentally or not, so he’d unceremoniously grabbed the gnome and deposited him on that spot after the third time it happened since reaching The Wide. The gnome had yelped and complained all the while, but abruptly fallen quiet when he remembered his decision to give him the silent treatment as punishment for his poor social skills.

Not that the rest of the world agreed.

“Oh Watchful Protector, what did I do to deserve this?” the gnome beseeched the sky.

“You must have done something truly praiseworthy, I’m sure,” the woman, Jaheira, told the gnome from where she was walking on the dwarf’s right, even as her eyes kept roaming over the crowds. “After all, your particular seating arrangement, so high up and easy on the feet unlike for us regular mortals, is a thing to be envied, not scorned.”

Bentley Mirrorshade shot her a half-hearted glare. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

The half-elf turned her head in the direction of the gnome, only having to look up very slightly. “Nature of course. I thought that would be obvious. After all, I am a druid.”

“Oh for…” The gnome sunk his face in his hand, forgetting or ignoring how his elbow was basically propped on the dwarf’s head. “Ask a stupid question.”

“Th-there there,” the man, Khalid, patted the gnome on the shoulder sympathetically from the other side of the dwarf. “Be n-not ov-ov-erly d-dismayed. M-my wife m-makes fools of p-p-people as a m-mater of course.”

“Quite so,” the dwarf nodded sagely. “It’s not you, good gnome, it’s her.”

“Watch it, young man,” Jaheira warned, sounding cross and amused at the same time. “Gorion’s deep fondness for you will only go so far in shaping my perception.”

“I suppose tact would dictate that I _not_ retort by saying that the reverse is not true, so I therefore have nothing to worry about because I am not sufficiently emotionally invested in your opinion of me compared to his, yes?”

If this was what being an adventurer consisted of, Liia figured she could understand why Eltan and Moruene remembered their wandering days so fondly.

Case in point, Jaheira gave the dwarf such a dry look that Liia Jannath couldn’t help a trilled laugh. One so full that it fluffed her feathers. “Yes. Tact _would_ dictate such.”

“Don’t think this will earn you any points with me either, young man,” Bentley grumbled in turn.

“I’m not worried about that,” said dwarf waved him away, inhaling from the pipe he seemed to smoke on and off. “You already love me plenty.”

“It must be some foul magic,” Bentley groused mulishly. “Yes, that’s got to be it. You must have cornered me in my basement yesterday and had your wicked way with me before enchanting my mind so that I’d believe I spilled my woes into your bosom willingly.”

Liia choked on the errant bran flake she was in the process of swallowing. Were they doing that on _purpose?_ She almost thought they’d veered into the realm of innuendo to get a jab at her, before remembering that she’d been supervising them polymorphed since shortly after they left Entar’s manse and had yet to engender a sign of having been noticed.

“I’d never do something like that to you,” the dwarf told the gnome seriously, puffing on his pipe all the while. “You are a happily married man.”

“And you think parroting my own words back at me will help when nothing else has?” Bentley balked.

“But all else _has_ helped plenty,” the dwarf followed blandly. “After all, you _are_ speaking to me again.”

“Oh gods, he’s right? I’ve been corrupted. _Infected!_ ” the gnome despaired, burying his face in both hands. Then his head shot up, alarmed. “Wait, why did you feel the need to actually specify ‘to you’ at the end of that sentence just now!?”

Over the next hour, Liia Jannath got to watch this interaction unfold even further even though the dwarf himself seemed to not actually provoke any of it deliberately. In fact he seemed to be strangely serious and upfront about everything he said, even though every context seemed to be pulled out of one of her comedy novels. It was the most surreal thing she’d ever seen that didn’t involve creeping horrors from beyond the Prime Material Plane. Not even the common act of bartering was spared, the duchess thought not much time later as she beheld Bentley Mirrorshade haggling with a southern salesmen over the price of some bolts of velvet cloth. Having the biggest dwarf this side of Waterdeep stare you down while trying to strike a bargain wasn’t exactly good for the soul if the twitchy-eyed, sweating trader was anything to go by. Especially when he chimed in with “truth” or “lie” whenever the human tried to make a claim about his goods. 

Eventually, and after absently foiling the pickpocketing attempts of a couple running urchins, the dwarf looked away from the Merchant League stall owner he’d been quietly intimidating and narrowed his eyes at something or someone that had caught his eye.

Then he snapped his fingers, conjuring a sheet of written paper which he passed to the gnome standing on his shoulder, immediately producing two others in quick succession to hand to their two other companions.

Bentley Mirrorshade went from frowning to an eye-popping gape, if only briefly, while the married couple blinked slowly at whatever was written on the conjured paper.

“You realise this is not the most prudent idea anyone has ever had, I trust?” Jaheira slowly told the dwarf. “’Twould also be at least nominally fair if you were to consider the repercussions on those accompanying you when coming up with such… _ideas_.”

“I have,” the dwarf answered, puffing on his pipe. “Which is why I am giving as much advance notice as I can.”

“One minute is not advance notice!” Bentley groaned, seemingly having forgotten about the man he’d been fleecing until just seconds before.

Liia tried to pinpoint who the dwarf was looking at but the crowds made it hard from that vantage, especially since Cyrus Anwar hadn’t actually tracked visually whoever or whatever it was since his abrupt headturn earlier.

The quiet weighed over the four even though it went unnoticed in the hustle and bustle of the great market.

Then the woman sighed. “Gorion never was one to stay idle when he knew injustice was occurring that he could do something about. I suppose I cannot begrudge your wish to live by his example.”

“I should have stayed at home,” Bentley grunted, then gave a soul-weary sigh. “Still, I suppose this will not break the letter of our agreement in regards to your whereabouts and comportment for today, and it _is_ time-sensitive if what you say is true.” Then he knocked on the top of the dwarf’s head to get his attention. “Just so you know, if I get arrested I’m blaming you!”

Arrested!?

“Duly noted,” so saying, the dwarf reached up to transfer Bentley Mirrorshade from his shoulder to the top of the stall they were in front of, ignoring the sputtering of the gnome about being perfectly capable of getting down on his own, thank you, as well as the sputtering of the man for having his stall so ‘defaced.’

That done, the dwarf upturned his pipe to clear it of ashes and embers, stowed it away and headed off down the road while Khalid made for the opposite direction.

Fortunately, it took few moments to finally spot who the dwarf was headed towards. Dabron Sashenstar. Brother of one of the Merchant League’s leaders, Aldeth. Also the person whose dead daughter had been found in the lair of the Ogre Mage the dwarf had killed in the hours leading up to dawn. Liia felt a rush of relief fill her, albeit tinged a bit of worry that perhaps the dwarf wasn’t out for mere condolences, and a glimmer of hope remained that nothing worse than some unintended insult would result from this.

Then Cyrus Anwar reached the man from behind, stopped him in his tracks with a hand on his shoulder, pulled the man around unceremoniously and, while the human was still regaining his balance, used the dagger that had flown out of his boot to stab him in the heart.

Liia Jannath wyrtled in heart-stopping shock.

Those closest to the scene stopped, stunned even as the rest of the market went on as was its wont.

Then someone screamed, loud and shrill, followed by another scream, and another, and more, then calls of “murderer” and “Guards Guards!” filled that section of The Wide. People started running away only to clash with the mob of curious people who were wanting to come and see what was going on, incidentally blocking the Flaming Fist guards stationed at the closest intersections from rushing to do their job. Pandemonium only got worse from there.

“What in Dweomerheart and all the Nine Hells!?” Liia rattled from her high vantage in birdspeech, frozen in stupefaction and outrage as she beheld-

“And how do you think _I_ feel about it?”

The duchess squawked and jumped so high that she lost her footing and had to flap for her life, barely clawing her way back to her perch on the frame of the seamster’s canopy. “What-!? Who-!” The starling-morphed mage fall quiet, finally recognizing the voice for what it was. Or _whose_ it was. “What is the meaning of this!?” she warbled, outraged.

Jaheira looked askance at her from where she stood perched on the same beam of wood, wildshaped as the same species of bird. Somehow she’d had time to shapeshift and fly over there in just as much time as it took the dwarf to cover barely more than a dozen steps. Without Liia even noticing.

Then the druid, instead of answering or explaining or anything else, looked in the direction _opposite_ from where the sudden murder had just been committed in broad daylight. “ _Nature, bring thy balms to this man-wrought wilderness…_ ” the bird whistled, low and softly as she slowly stretched her wings. “ _Thorny brambles, creeping vines, **burst forth**!_ ” The last words came out as a powerful, lilting song.

A flux of magical power rushed out and through her, then down through wood, air and plaster, into the earth.

And on the far end of that section of the market, a runner that had just managed to make it through the crowd, and was just about to turn a corner, suddenly tripped on a vine that sprouted from the earth and snared his foot, then the whole leg and soon enough his whole body. It rendered him easy pickings for the man, Khalid, to walk over and knock him out with a none too gentle shield bash to the temple.

“Well,” Jaheira said drily, fluffing her feathers and looking away from her husband to the dwarf. “That was bracing.” Then to her. “Gaze not upon me, duchess, for ‘tis not I with whom your answers lie.”

Almost unwillingly, Liia Jannath’s eyes moved away from the other shapechanged woman and settled on the sight that had thrown her city into such a frenzy and did a double take.

The dwarf was still standing there, quiet and calm as if the yelling and panicked crowd around him didn’t matter, but at his feet lay a body that was _not_ Dabron Sashenstar, but something else. Something she recognized. A grey-skinned thing, pale, hairless, slender and frail, with gangly limbs and half-formed features. Its large, bulging eyes were yellow with slitted pupils. She could see them even from that distance, wide open and filled with the surprise it felt at its sudden death.

“And so the deception is revealed,” Jaheira trilled from next to her. “What will you do now, oh omnipresent authority figure?”

The bird-shaped druid flew off, over the market and landed on the building opposite the murder scene from the duchess. The gaping, shocked and increasingly outraged, bird-transformed duchess.

That…

That…

“-.  .-“

The ceiling-high double window shattered inward, clear glass as nothing against her dive.

_That brazen_ **_miscreant_** _!_

The table groaned and broke under her, a result helped greatly by the long, sharp claws on her feet and the kinetic force gathered through sheer momentum.

_“Even if Cyrus happened to lack his unique perception, Bentley has more than enough experience to know when something is not behaving as it should. And even in absence of that, I would have known a fake bird from a real one in any case. After all, I **am** a druid.”_

The startled group of _imposters_ barely had time to gape before she was on them, griffon claw and beak raking flesh and breaking bone even as her wings unfurled far and wide, upturning chairs and sending platters and candlesticks flying everywhere.

_They’d known she was trailing them since as soon as she caught up with them, mere minutes after they left Entar’s manor._

Three of the remaining four doppelgangers attempted to climb to their feet and run. One of them succeeded.

_That their antics had not, in fact, been done just to rib her was only a minor consolation_.

Jumping over the dead and broken bodies of the doppelgangers she had just massacred, Liia Jannath took her natural form, snapped out an incantation and trapped the remaining doppelganger in a resilient sphere before it managed to reach the stairs.

_Never in her life had she witnessed something as brazen as the killing that that… that... that **dwarf** had committed in broad daylight. It was scandalous!_

The doppelganger was trapped, but not silenced. The moment the sphere of force materialised around it, the humanoid thing produced the loudest, moaning cry for assistance that Liia had ever heard. Not that she expected it to make much difference considering the commotion she’d caused, but she supposed it wasn’t unexpected.

That was when the screams of terror started on the bottom floor.

_It had taken no great exercise of the mind to understand what the druid had implied with her last question. It galled to have her choices dictated for her so, the mage fumed._

The sounds of footsteps and claws raking on wood balusters was clear despite the terrified shrieking from below. Liia would have dearly loved to send a Cloudkill down the stairway, but she did not have her combat magic loadout prepared. She had not exactly left her workshop that morning expecting to get into a fight with shapeshifting infiltrators out to sabotage her city and ruin the lives of its people.

_Would she show herself or not?_

Fortunately, she didn’t really need her most destructive magic to deal with _these_ creatures.

_Will she let the panic truly take hold of the crowd, or would she land and reveal herself to all and sundry._

Just as the first of the three doppelgangers reached the top of the stairwell, Liia Jannath polymorphed again.

_Would she effectively send out the message that the Grand Dukes of Baldur’s Gate knew of and condoned the presence and activities undertaken by the dwarf and his allies in her city?_

The flare of spell light and wafting smoke burst outwards, hurled every which way by 4000 pounds worth of six-legged, blue-scaled serpentine beast mid-way through its slithering charge, jaw open wide in a hissing snarl.

_As the bird landed and became a woman, Liia Jannath internally thought that she could understand why Entar ended up hating the dwarf on sight._

The first doppelganger was split in half in her maw, death rattle loud and lingering. Normally she would have to make an effort of will against the sane reaction to biting a monster in half with her teeth. The feel of its blood on her tongue, but not today. Liia Jannath was _outraged_ and she was going to take her pound of flesh, even though she hadn’t quite gone past that stage where she was as angry at her nominal aid as she was at her enemies.

_What is the meaning of this, she’d demanded._

She almost wished she hadn’t asked.

Almost.

The behir she had become slid to a halt at the top of the stairs, curled around the second doppelganger and raked it with all six of her clawed legs – the grey-skinned thing was ripped to pieces – then she grabbed onto the top stair and baluster with her forelegs, opened her maw and _roared._

The greater doppelganger just four steps lower, who’d just finished casting mirror image in the hopes of confusing her, fell down the stairs screaming and twitching, electrocuted, burned and with both eyes burst open.

Yes, Liia Jannath thought viciously, she didn’t need her best combat loadout to deal with these creatures. Thunder breath would do just fine.

She had to polymorph again before going down the stairs – a behir was much larger than even the griffon had been – but the dire lion form suited her well, and though she’d normally be against the idea of coming within reaching distance of the lion’s share of enemies, today was an exception.

The screams of terror from the ground floor had become wails of despair and tortured screams of the damned from hell by the time she was done with the first floor. She almost did not care enough to ponder the escalation in noise, far and above anything that the smaller distance would justify. But her anger had been sufficiently spent for that much at least. Ripping out the throat of the last monster, she took her natural form and used prestidigitation to clean up immediately.

Then she faced Brandilar, the guard captain at the Merchants' League Estate, who was standing in the doorway to a room whose door the doppelgangers had just broken open when she came down.

Over the next few minutes, the wary and weary man explained how he and the – now all dead – guards helped herd all the survivors on that floor and protected them against the creatures when they all shed their disguises soon after the screams of terror started below. Liia briefly explained what was going on and why she was there, after which she learned that the reason so many of those things were present was due to a great many of the league’s representatives having gathered to hold talks with a business delegation from the Seven Suns trading roster. Per Brandilar’s words, the doppelgangers were almost to a man from that delegation, but Irlentree and Zorl, the two leaders of the Merchant League itself besides Aldeth Sashenstar, had revealed themselves to be doppelgangers as well. One of them a greater specimen, the one Liia had killed.

The woman had to keep her reaction off her face. In her anger and indignation she’d killed what was possibly the most important source of information in that whole building. Hopefully the remains were not too charred for a spell of Speak with the Dead.

That was when the terrified screams of horror and agony from below spiked to truly horrendous heights, for a moment.

Then, as if some sort of threshold of resistance had been shattered, terror gave way to horror, then to lisping, moaning sobs and what sounded like the doppelgangers were begging for mercy.

What in the abyss was that dwarf doing down there?

Brandilar offered to lead the way down, then insisted quite vehemently when she said it was unnecessary, so she allowed him to precede her just to avoid wasting any more time. They met no resistance while they descended the last flight of stairs, but they stopped before actually emerging from the stairwell due to the wall of unfathomable darkness that had filled the archway. Wall of unfathomable darkness beyond which lay whatever house of horrors had been conjured up.

No, wait.

Not _conjured_ up.

The duchess narrowed her eyes and disbelieved the sight before her with all her will.

Much to her shock, the illusion only flickered for a moment, and the lack of follow-up reaction on Brandilar’s part meant only her own sight had pierced through it. This… this was quite possibly the strongest illusion she had ever encountered.

Any follow-up to her failed attempt to free her perception from the (passive!) snare cast by the illusion she hadn’t even _walked_ into were derailed by the sound of boots on sandstone.

Behind her.

Whirling around with a spell on her lips, Liia Jannath paused when faced with the sight of Khalid coming up from the basement.

Then another one of those things – an _elder elite_ – suddenly emerged from said wall, screaming. It ducked under Brandilar’s startled sword swing, ignored her entirely, then tripped on air with a horrified gasp when its foot sunk down through the floor tile half a meter _ahead_ of where the downward staircase actually begun.

The doppelganger fell down the stairs just in reach of the half-elf’s sword, or would have if not for the shadow tentacle that spurt from the darkness in the entryway, wrapped around its ankle and dragged it back into the unfathomable dark, screaming in horror all the while.

There was only stunned silence, for a time.

Then Brandilar’s whole body shivered and Liia boggled at the fake stair in a most unlady-like fashion, chills going down her spine at the realisation that the wall of darkness was _not_ where the illusion began. She’d been within it for who knew how long.

A wail of anguish pierced the horrific gloom, making Brandilar jump.

Scowling, the duchess turned and glared at the offending darkness wall, swearing to herself that she would never leave home without True Seeing memorised ever again. Her attempt worked no better than before, piercing the haze only for a moment, but at least it let her catch a glimpse of the woman, surprisingly. Jaheira, arm outstretched and a wall of living brambles filled with the terrifying visages of some eldritch monsters constricting and gnawing at three or more of those grey creatures, all sprawled or hanging in different places and states. And at the center of a graveyard, Cyrus Anwar himself stood, glaring into the eyes of a hapless doppelganger whom he had by the throat, one-handed.

“M-my, t-that c-c-certainly sounds b-bracing,” Khalid stuttered. It made for a strange experience, to have that faltering speech come from behind all that steel he was wearing.

Thankfully, more noise from behind and below drew her attention, allowing her to tear her thoughts away from what she’d just seen. What she saw next did not help her mind much, however.

Cyrus Anwar was climbing up from the basement, one doppelganger slung over his shoulder and dragging two more of them in his wake, bound, gagged and struggling as much as they could to get _away_ from the wall of unfathomable darkness.

So he wasn’t responsible for…? She had just seen him within that illusion!

“Irlentree and Zorl will be fine,” the dwarf supplied, absently kicking the nearest doppelganger he was dragging along in the head. Its struggles ceased. “The shapeshifters had them imprisoned down there and were about to kill them but that is no longer a possibility. Dabron Sashenstar is in worse shape, but he is receiving priestly help as we speak so he will make a full recovery as well.”

Liia suddenly understood what was happening. The dwarf and druid she had glimpsed beyond the shadow were themselves illusions. The mage gave her surroundings a cautious look and had to prevent a shudder from showing. A multi-layered figment of this size, whose bounds she still didn’t clearly glimpse, and one that incorporated sufficiently accurate replicas of real people besides?

The duchess gave the wall of black haze a look of consternation. She was starting to regret her choice to be shot of her aggravating company as soon as possible, but at the same time was glad she had decided to be the one coming in from above.

Cyrus Anwar unceremoniously dropped the shapeshifter he was carrying on top of the other two – they gasped and groaned sibilantly but did nothing else – and walked over to the archway. He stood there and looked into the seeming abyss for a few moments, rubbing his beard. Then he knocked on the frame three times, loudly.

Nothing changed for a few moments, but then the blackness drew out like tentacles and strands of shade. The dwarf entered the Marchant League Estate entrance hall immediately after, not even in the least rattled, unlike the others walking in his wake. As she followed, Liia looked cautiously around what looked like a vast field of crypts, gravemarkers, mausoleums (one of which they’d come out of), pyres, gallows, mass graves, and worse. Spiky, gnarled plants covered the various edifices, some tall and twisted enough to reach all the way to the hovering, bunched up skulls. All around them, the horizon quaked with an endlessly raging storm, eerily silent like everything else there. And high, high above, a huge skull-faced moon leered, providing the only source of light, a soft malevolent luminescence that gave Liia Jannath the feeling she was being watched. And the _stench_ …

Liia refrained from shuddering again, with even more difficulty than the first time. If she did not know better, she would have sworn that she had just walked into the Endless Graveyard, the sixteenth layer of the Abyss.

She looked at the handful of doppelgangers lying on the ground or trapped by thorny vines against tombstones and dead-looking, twisted trees. Their faces were scrunched up or wreaked by terror, eyes wide or rolled up in a dead faint, mouths foaming. Abishai, myrmyxicus, pit fiends and hezrou loomed over them, horrific torture devices and weapons stuck through or around the terrified, despairing creatures who most certainly did _not_ know better.

If she’d known this would happen when the dwarf respectfully deferred to Bentley Mirrorshade when it came to planning their attack, on account of the gnome being “the only one with experience in taking over large, guarded compounds belonging to things that the world was better off dead with,” she would have had second thoughts.

Lots of them.

Then the illusion wavered and faded, no by your leave, no nothing, leaving behind the almost completely untouched ground floor of the Merchant League Estate. The perfect mirror image that Cyrus Anwar was intently studying disappeared, along with the menacingly looming frame of a provocatively-clad Jaheira as well, who’d apparently been directing her ‘minions’ and revelling in the tortures of her captives. Only the grey-skinned shapeshifters were left, two unconscious on the floor, one rocking himself against the wall and one sprawled over a chair, twitching and moaning, throat raw from all the anguished screams of the past several minutes.

And in the middle of the hall, Bentley Mirrorshade sat on the floor, picking his teeth with the stick from the kebab he’d just finished eating.

This time Liia Jannath couldn’t repress the shudder at all.

“I must state my disapproval of your approach,” Jaheira suddenly stated from the stairwell they’d all just come out of, supporting Dabron Sashenstar who was looking around, tired but vindicated. “I would never wear such outrageous garb and am in no way, shape or form the sort of person who consorts with fiends!”

“You have just the right amount of pride, though,” the gnome said, unconcerned. Then, when the druid glowered at him, he shrugged. “I needed _something_ to work off of. No offense, lad,” he told the dwarf next. ”But I just didn’t have it in me to make a believable torturer out of you.” His face said more than his words did. “So I merely had you ‘kill’ a couple of these miscreants before phasing your role out,” Bentley air quoted.

He could make his surroundings look like the Abyss itself and could turn a _druid_ into the worst thing this side of succubi, but he didn’t have it in him to make a Bhaalspawn out to be properly evil. The duchess barely suppressed the impulse to burst into hysterical laughter at that bizarre admission.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“S-so…” Khalid ventured hesitantly. “T-the S-seven Suns n-next, y-you th-think?”

“NO!” Liia burst before she could think better of it. It earned her some strange looks from everyone there. With some difficulty she drew a breath and composed herself, mind racing to come up with a diplomatic way to tell them that she thought her city had seen enough of their particular brand of ‘efficacy’ for one day. “No. I believe sufficient evidence and witnesses have been gathered up,” she frowned at the insensate doppelgangers around the room. “It will take some preparation but The Flaming Fist should be able to take it from here.”

“The Iron Throne compound is quite sturdy and well defended though,” the dwarf mused, making Liia start. “And they’ll probably have alibis and explanations ready to at the very least stall any official inquiry for a good while.”

“What does the Iron Throne have to do with things?” she asked, starting to regret not having lingered with her fellow dukes to at least get a summary of the dangers the city was in, that morning.

“Oh dear,” Bentley said worriedly, realizing the lack of information she had just acknowledged herself.

”… I think we will have to reconvene early,” Jaheira said carefully, mindful of the company they had, even if it was the one person who they’d set off to rescue since killing his doppelganger an hour prior.

“Don’t mind me,” the man grunted tiredly, gratefully accepting a kebab stick from the gnome he’d collapsed next to and tearing into it. It took three large mouthfuls for him to find the energy and mind to speak again. “I am, quite frankly, too tired, sore and famished to pay attention to whatever it is you’re talking about. I’ll just be over here for a couple of minutes, then I’m off to find and hug my wife and daughter for a few hours.”

Liia suddenly remembered that Dabron Sashenstar’s daughter had been found dead just that morning and all signs suggested he didn’t know about that.

“…Hmm,” Cyrus Anwar said musingly. “So _this_ is what awkwardness feels like.”


	24. Interlude: The Bright Side of Baldur’s Gate (3)

“I want him out of my city.”

Those were the words that Entar Silvershield uttered after Liia’s illusory projection of her afternoon reached its end. The duchess was not surprised that would be his reaction, and not because he was just restating the opinion he hadn’t changed since that morning. Witnessing someone he considered (at the very least) a nuisance commit murder in broad daylight was not Entar Silvershield’s idea of acceptable behavioural divergence, let alone anything approaching normal. The murdered creature being a doppelganger infiltrator out to contribute to the ruin Baldur’s Gate and its surrounding lands notwithstanding.

For her part, the duchess refrained from actually commenting on his flat demand, ironically glad that she had the stack of notes she was studying as an excuse not to respond to the man. The ludicrously thick and even more ludicrously detailed stack of paper sheets that the dwarf had conjured up that morning, before he got himself and everyone with him kicked out of the Silvershield manor.

Unfortunately, she could not say she was as glad about the _contents_ of those notes as she was about the convenient excuse they provided her. Especially that pile marked “Angelo Dosan  & Related Plots.” The information was as dreadful as it was damning, if true. And her day had done little to make her think it wasn’t.

Alas, it so happened that she couldn’t say her fellow woman and mage was as discrete or tolerant of Entar’s unyielding animosity as her.

“My, you’re so decisive today,” Moruene shot from across the table, where she was sitting next to Eltan. “Why, it’s almost as if you _don’t_ actually share the rule of the city and surrounding region with three other people.”

“Don’t try to impugn my honour when I’m only thinking of the city’s best interests!”

“But are you really?” Moruene narrowed her eyes. Liia was willing to bet she hadn’t forgiven the man for his insult at her that morning. “Far as I can see, all he did was expose and help overturn an infiltration plot that would have crippled our economy. Not to mention claimed the lives of a whole bunch of people already, with more soon to come.”

“He committed murder in broad daylight and then had the _gall_ to blackmail one of us into endorsing it in public!” Entar snapped, half-sitting up in his seat in an attempt to loom over her.

“Well, the blackmailing seemed to be more that druid woman, and it’s not like he did it on a whim. Or does the fact he basically saved the lives of the Merchant League not matter to you? All this _after_ he cleaned up half the city’s underworld of the worst filth in more ways than one. _In one night_.” Well, she was exaggerating quite a bit there, but-

“And what does that say about his nature?” Entar pushed forward back, raising his voice. “Or do you think he merely _stumbled_ over one of the most wretched serial murderers in Baldur’s Gate’s history by mere chance? And don’t get me started on the sewer business.”

“Maybe he did,” Moruene shrugged. Liia wasn’t sure if she really wasn’t convinced or just pretending. “And even if he didn’t, what does it matter? Are you seriously trying to say it’s a bad thing?”

“He, he-“ Entar was trembling in place, so angry he was. “He’s an arrogant, aggravating, uppity menace!”

“You’re just saying that because he revealed the holes in your security,” the woman pushed back, pursing her lips and not showing any sighs of being intimidated. “Which, I have to say, is a lot better than those holes being exploited to murder you and your wife in your bed, if the information in these notes is in any way real.”

Entar Silvershield sat back with a snarl and tossed the stack of pages away from him in disgust. His own stack, because the dwarf had been considerate enough to conjure four sets of the written information for them. “As detailed as it may look, there is absolutely no proof supporting the veracity of _anything_ written down here.”

“I suppose my life means nothing then.” The quiet words immediately pierced but nevertheless increased the tension in the room as well. Several times over. “Good to know.”

The four dukes and Moruene alike stopped what they were doing to instead pay attention to Eddard Silvershield, who’d been quietly sitting at Entar’s side the entire time.

Entar gave an explosive huff. “You know that’s not what I meant.” But it escaped no one that the man didn’t meet his son’s eyes at that.

“What _did_ you mean then, father?” This was the first time the young man actually defied his father so thoroughly, in Liia’s memory. “As blunt as Lady Moruene is, I find myself unable to contest anything she just said.”

Entar glared at his son, but Eddard only gazed back, not flinching even slightly. Whether it was the near death experiences of the past few days or whatever else, the son no longer considered himself subordinate to the father.

At least not in this.

“… He’s a security risk I can’t abide.”

“Like you can’t abide the Shadow Thieves?” Eddard bit out.

An uncomfortable pall descended upon all six of those sat at that table, except Moruene who’d long been advocating their removal from Baldur’s Gate. Liia herself had long since given up on that argument.

Entar Silvershield sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “That’s an entirely different matter and this is neither the time nor place to discuss it.” He glared at the papers he’d been dwelling on all afternoon, now scattered all over the tabletop.

Liia was surprised he didn’t get more angry instead of weary, but she supposed that knowing his son had almost been killed (twice) in the last two days meant he was less likely to resent or react explosively to anything he said or did, at least for the near future.

“… You can’t compare the two,” Entar finally added.

“I suppose not,” Eddard assented, picking up the sheet on top of his father’s mess and giving it a cursory skim. “Considering the sheer thoroughness and detail contained in these papers, the total absence of forewarning from the Shadow Thieves is striking, even disregarding their long-standing agreement to pass on relevant information to the Council of Four. Why, given the sheer scale and influence of the Iron Throne’s operations, and the inevitable prize it must qualify as to that guild of thieves, I can’t help but wonder if those parasites are deliberately withholding information or just incompetent.”

“You’ve made your point, son. Sarcasm does not become you.”

“Please do not mistake me,” Eddard said lowly. “I am not being sarcastic. I am being _disdainful_ , and I expect to remain so whenever the matter of the pox that the Shadow Thieves are is brought up.”

“Then perhaps you should _not_ bring it up again.” Entar’s patience was finally starting to fray.

“Very well then,” the younger man nodded, eyes defiant. “I suppose that means we are back to the issue of the unnecessary and undeserved scorn being heaped upon the guests we are supposed to be hosting in the other room.”

“My patience for roundabout spiels is one I reserve for my trades, son, not my family. Say what you have to say to me directly, if you have anything worthwhile left to say at all.”

“I shouldn’t have to,” the younger man said, undaunted. “Everything he’s done for the past two days has been a _direct_ favour to us and ours. Why should it matter that he happened to cause you some minor discomfort in the process? If he’d really done something deserving of this contempt from you, mother would have had at least some misgivings about playing hostess to them while we bicker here. Instead, she chose to do so in _spite_ of you. I never thought I’d say this, but I am beginning to understand why Skie has been feeling trapped and restricted in this house.”

Belt placed his Holy Symbol of Helm on the table. It hardly made any sound, but somehow it stopped the emerging argument entirely, and caught the attention of the others besides. “Seeing as your discussion is now entering personal family territory, I believe it is safe to say that your argument has sufficiently run its course.”

Liia busied herself with tidying up her stack of information papers while the others subsided. Usually Belt had to act as peacemakers for Entar and _Eltan_ , but oddly enough the latter had been quite silent and contemplative that day, letting Entar blow out steam while he studied his notes and watched Liia’s magically-assisted account of her afternoon.

“Now,” Belt followed up, sitting back while laying his hands one top of the other on the table. “Whatever any of us may think about how the positive impact of their actions compares to the disruption their methods have inflicted upon this city, there are no grounds for actually banishing the four in the other room, let alone doing anything more drastic.”

Eddard surprised them all by failing to repress a snort of amusement. “Good thing too. I’m not sure we’d survive the retaliation ‘anything more drastic’ would incite.” That earned the young man curious looks from everyone there. “Oh, right. He wouldn’t have told you I suppose. I’m surprised, though.” Eddard eyed Eltan. “You didn’t interrogate Jerrick?”

“Going over the information within these papers was considered more urgent,” the leader of the Flaming Fist answered.

Seeing his son’s obvious amusement, Entar all but demanded that he get to the point and explain himself.

A few minutes after that, Liia Jannath would have been lying if she said her mind wasn’t spinning with the implications of the company the dwarf kept. Gorion, his father, was largely an unknown, and in most ways so was Imoen of Candlekeep, despite her nascent fame as a writer. The same could _not_ be said about Bentley Mirroshade and his wife, and as for Khelben Arunsun and Elminster Aumar… One was a masked lord of Waterdeep, literally their peer (retired or not, and she was betting on not), the other was widely seen as the most powerful man in the world. That Cyrus Anwar seemed to be at odds with the Sage of Shadowdale, well, Liia wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad thing considering that his relationship with the other man, the _second_ most powerful man in the world, was the opposite of strained, to hear Eddard describe it.

Entar looked at his son, baffled. “What in the Nine Hells brought _those_ two meddling old men to this part of the Sword Coast? What were they even doing? Hells, son, what were _you_ even doing?”

“Having dinner,” the younger man said blandly, then blinked at the reactions that got. “No, really. That’s what happened,” he shrugged. “They’d missed Lord Cyrus’ birthday apparently, which was just last week, so he invited them to dine with him before they left.”

“So he’s a Lord now, is he?” Entar latched onto that point almost reflexively, but then he turned incredulous. “They came here from halfway across the world to have _dinner_!?”

“Probably not,” Eddard said, though he looked unsure. “In hindsight, I get the impression that they’d been on the road since the second of the month, but somehow took four or so days just to reach the Friendly Arm despite never having been headed anywhere else. Something _must_ have happened in the interim, no doubt one of the multiple assassination attempts against them, but I’m not sure how the two Archmages figure into that. I was still coming up to Beregost from Nashkel at the time, and afterwards I couldn’t think about anything besides the attempts on my life, and the plot against the city and you, so I didn’t have it in me to actually dwell on anything else.”

“Conspiracy that we still only have that dwarf’s word on,” Entar noted, though he seemed less vehement about it than before.

“And the endorsement of all the people aforementioned,” Entar replied, frowning.

“But do they really?” Moruene asked, surprisingly considering that she’d been at odds with Entar up to that point. “Endorse him and his word, I mean. Just how prone are those people to believing his word? Keep in mind that the Council of Four actually are their peers, so with that in mind do you still hold that they, or even one of them, would still take his word over that of the people here if things degenerated to the point of animosity?”

Eddard looked between her and his father seriously. It took a time for him to collect his thoughts, but when he spoke it was without any doubt or hesitation. “There was a half-orc at the inn yesterday, and he was present while his Highness had his confrontation with that would-be assassin necromancer. A mere passing mention of the half-orc’s alleged crimes, the mass slaughter of a whole village down to the last babe being only one example, was enough for Khelben Arunsun to quietly fly after him last evening after the individual in question left the inn, and dispose of him and his remains without any qualms or further investigation.”

The people arrayed at that table took a few moments to digest that revelation.

“Normally I would cry foul, but considering just _who_ it is we are talking about here…” Belt trailed off. “As much as I hate to think about what other implications that carries, I must admit that to indeed be a strong endorsement.”

“I suppose that is good then,” Eddqard said flatly. “Seeing as _my own_ endorsement does not seem to carry any weight of its own at all.”

“And I suppose his brazen actions the past day should have no bearing in light of that?” Entar growled. “It does _not_ sound like you’re being particularly objective, son.”

“The same could be said of _you_ , father.”

“Enough,” Belt cut in, calm and composed but voice heavy with the weight of providence. “Lest you rehash the argument you only just concluded.”

“Fine then,” Entar bit out. “I’m getting tired of carrying this whole topic by myself in any event. Do feel free to make your own contributions, since I am only _one_ of four, as was so very recently pointed out to me.”

“Very well,” Belt answered, ignoring the barb Entar sent at Moruene. “First off, we should decide to what extent to believe what is written in these papers. While Rosk’s exposure as an infiltrator is damning, the Flaming Fist being possibly compromised is just _one_ of several major problems currently plaguing the region. Before anything else, we should decide how reliable we should consider everything written here, especially since all these things – the bandit raids, the iron crisis, the Iron Throne – are all supposedly part of the same conspiracy. And not even the main conspiracy we should be worried over, if this addendum about the plans cooked up by Anchev’s allegedly Bhaal-spawned son is to be believed.”

“That’s still under debate?” Eddard asked in disbelief.

“You tell us,” Belt replied. “How could _one_ person possibly uncover all this information? Especially since it only occurred in a matter of at most days? I don’t expect the doppelgangers from the Merchant League to confirm even a tenth of everything here.”

“You mean you don’t know?” Eddard asked, baffled, then looked at his father. “Why were you so dead set on Lord Cyrus being a security risk then?”

“What do you mean? After the way he ‘got my attention’ this morning, you still feel you need to ask?”

Eddard stared at his father. “Oh dear…”

One explanation involving a dwarf, his godly progenitor and a very specific type of second sight later, the four Grand Dukes of Baldur’s Gate, plus Moruene, each sat back in their seats, aghast.

 “… I want him out of the city _right now!_ ”

Eddard slumped in his seat and pressed two fingers against his forehead in apparent pain.

Entar didn’t notice. “I want him gone! By morning, no, by evening! I don’t care what it takes, he _goes_!”

“And how is that going to help!?” Moruene snapped, though she was rubbing her temple and not looking at Entar or anyone.

Looking back on it, Liia Jannath realized she’d been and still was a lot more rattled than she realized by the events that took place since that morning. If she hadn’t been, she’d have wondered about the dwarf’s tendency to suddenly produce those random, detailed factoids about things and people about to kill something or someone else instead of needing Eddard to bring it up, let alone explain it.

Liia sighed, pinching her nose and speaking up for the first time since her projection ended. “Much as I hate to say it, she has a point. He’s already laid eyes on all of us so wouldn’t it already a case of too little, too late at this point?”

Entar looked fit to burst into a litany of curses aimed at dead gods of murder, aggravating adventurers and possibly dwarves in general. To Liia’s honest surprise, he managed to breathe in through his nose a few times and instead settled for repeating himself. “He _goes_. As soon as possible, he _has to go_.”

“Oh come off it, all of you!” Belt snapped, much to Liia’s surprise since he seldom did. “You’re grown men and women, not scared children. Control yourselves!” He glared at Entar then. “You especially, settle down and calm yourself. Or are there any murders we should be worrying about finding in your closets for you to panic in so unsightly a manner?”

“And I am supposed to believe this revelation did not rattle you at all?” Entar said scathingly.

“What rattles me is how easily you accepted this claim about Cyrus Anwar’s divinatory abilities as reality, when you were so eager to dismiss every other shred of information he provided up to that point.” The priest beheld the merchant lord sternly, at least on the outside. Liia could never read him well enough to know what he was thinking or feeling internally, other than what he deliberately revealed. “You can’t have it both ways. Is or isn’t his word trustworthy in your mind?”

Entar Silvershield glared at the Priest of Helm, but he forced himself not to retort and instead turned to the other man there. “And what of you, Eltan?” Entar turned on the other man there. “Have you nothing to say about this? You’ve been awfully quiet since Liia’s return! Have you no contribution to make, or perhaps you already have a solution that we simpletons have overlooked?”

“We give him a job.”

Eltan stared. Everyone stared at Eltan.

“We _what?_ ”

Despite the wear that Entar’s unceasing criticisms and outrage had been inflicting on her peace of mind, or what was left of it after her afternoon, Liia couldn’t help but agree with him on this one. That Moruene was looking at her friend oddly further encouraged that reaction. “I think we’ll need more details than _that_.”

“While I would not normally agree with Entar in this case, I am afraid that my Flaming Fist is, unfortunately, in no real position to keep up with the sheer chaos our guest has proven so capable and prone to causing everywhere he goes.”

_The Lord of Murder shall perish. And in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny. Chaos shall be sown in their passage._

Making note of the sheet of paper Eltan was unwaveringly gazing down upon, the sheet detailing Angelo Dosan’s loyalties and the particulars of his role as part of the Flaming Fist, Liia was beginning to understand why Eltan had been so quiet since that morning. It wasn’t that he wasn’t engaged in the conversation or lacked an opinion. It was that his mind and heart were already taken up by how he’d been feeling since he read and proceeded to again and again re-read everything pertaining to his organisation. It was how he’d been feeling since confronted with the thorough account of the who, what, how and why his mercenary and police force was being steadily subverted from the inside.

Absolutely murderous.

“In the interest of hopefully resolving at least one of the many contentious matters currently weighing down this discussion, let me say this.” Eltan slowly looked up from the damning sheet of paper. “I have decided to consider everything written down here to be true until proven otherwise. As such-”

 “You can’t be se-“

“As _such,_ ” Eltan cut Entar off with a glare. “As such, my first and foremost concern is with regards to the Flaming Fist mercenary organisation, specifically the fact that it has been compromised. Therefore, until this matter has been resolved, Baldur’s Gate lacks the means to actually enforce any true censure upon anyone, be they adventurers, the Iron Throne or any related bodies, let alone the bandits operating out of the Wood of Sharp Teeth.” His eyes fell back to the paper he hadn’t moved on from since his second re-reading of everything. “Especially since they’re apparently mercenaries themselves, rather than mere brigands.”

“ _What_ , then?” Entar grumbled, eyes hard. “What master plan do you have, oh great military genius?”

Liia was beginning to wonder why the man was behaving so antagonistically. He and Eltan were actually supposed to be a lot more friendly than this, even if they did butt heads every other meeting.

“As I said, we give him a job.” Eltan set down the paper and laid hands one over the other. “Specifically, we send him off to deliver our offer of employment to any diviners or individuals with skills relevant to the task of helping assist in the purge of our police force, as well as what will come after. Because make no mistake, there is going to be a purge.” He glared at the incriminating papers weighing down their table. “Oh yes, there will be a purge.”

Liia half-expected Entar to say something, perhaps question the wisdom of actually believing everything or anything that dwarf had written down, but it appeared that Eltan’s resolution had given pause to even him.

“Ahem.”

The mage almost gave a start. Like the other four, she looked upon the younger Silvershield.

Eddard seemed to shrink momentarily, but then straightened and spoke his mind, just like before. “I don’t suppose this is the best time to ask if any of you actually _talked_ to our guests about their plans for the near future? Or at least the manner of his travel to the city itself? Because then you’d have known enough not to assume this ‘job’ could possibly keep him away from the city for more than a week if he put his mind to it.”

“And I suppose, son, that next thing you’ll say is-“

“Settle down you two,” Belt said wearily, then turned back to Eltan in the hopes of derailing another family spat. “And by sending him out, you mean what exactly?” Belt prodded.

“I thought that would be obvious,” Eltan looked back up from the papers that had so incensed him. “We send him back to Candlekeep. There’s no other place we can hire specialists and mages capable of consistently unravelling Doppelganger disguises and illusions. We will be calling on the priests of the various congregations in Baldur’s Gate of course, but arcane specialists will no doubt prove helpful, if not essential. And who knows, maybe our guest will decide to stay there for a time. I don’t think he will, but one can only hope. And if nothing else, he’ll be out of Entar’s hair for the next while.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake!” Eddard threw his arms in the air. “Did any one of you even bother asking what their plans were!?”

“So far they seem to consist of causing murder and chaos with every other step,” Entar bit out. “Though I suppose it’s not surprising for those of his kind.”

Eddard seemed to shake in place with some unclear emotion, but he ultimately forced himself to settle down. He treated his father to just one, last, unreadable look, then he leaned against the backrest of his chair and fell silent.

Over the next hour and a half, the Four, with occasional input from Moruene, set about planning the purge of the Flaming Fist, methods for investigating the Iron Throne, plans for handling the tainted iron issue out of Nashkel (with and without informing Amn of certain facts), tactics for cleaning up possibly infiltrated compounds like the Seven Suns trading roster, and the best strategies for cleaning up the ‘bandit’ menace from the region once the Flaming Fist was brought back under control and cleared of subversive elements. Once all that was decided and likely time frames and resource allocations determined, they were able to come up with what they considered to be the best approach to ‘hiring’ Cyrus Anwar away from Baldur’s Gate.

“Well then,” Belt finally pronounced, relaxing in his chair for the first time that day. “I do believe we have a workable plan. If all goes well, and even if only half of everything goes well, I expect we will have solved most if not all elements of the crisis within one or two months. Now all that remains is to decide who will offer our guest the job we discussed.”

At which point Eddard Silvershield, who’d been sitting back and holding his hands steepled in front of his face, spoke up for the first time since his last exchange with his father, not looking at anything or anyone. “I don’t suppose this would be a good time to mention that neither Lord Cyrus nor anyone in his company ever even intended to stay in the city past today?”

The limp hands of Eltan and Moruene made muffled splats against the wooden surface of the table. For her part, Liia just stared at the young man, barely registering Entar Silvershield slumping in his chair and growling in frustrated exasperation.

Entar Silvershield palmed his face with a groan. “Oh for Gods’s sake, son!  Could you not have said this earlier!?”

“I _tried_ to get around to it, but-“

“And I suppose next thing you’ll say is that he’s going to miraculously solve every other problem we have as well!?” Entar snapped at his son. Yelled, almost. “What else, are you going to say he’s somehow arranged for the iron crisis and bandit activity to be solved over the next few days as well?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, father,” Eddard answered, barefaced. “Only the Nashkel issue and the secret, slave-manned iron mine operating of Cloakwood are going to be handled in the next few days. The bandit camp in Peldvale won’t be assaulted until _at least_ next week, I’m sure.”

Stunned silence.

“Come now, everyone!” Eddard said blithely. “Considering that news of Lord Cyrus’ public declaration of his identity and paternity is going to take just about the same amount of time to reach the city, the new and improved Flaming Fist mercenary company is guaranteed to not be short on work, so really, it’s all for the best!”

“He did _what!?_ ” Belt balked alongside Eltan and Liia herself in a most uncharacteristic display of stupefaction.

“Eedaaaard!” Entar roared, long and loud, shooting up from his seat with such force that his heavy, mahogany chair fell on its back with a loud crash. “You are hereby restricted to your rooms until you’ve thought over your actions and we have discussed your conduct!”

There was a stupefied pause as everyone stared at Entar Silvershield.

Did… did he just say his twenty-some-year-old, adult son was _grounded?_

Eddard Silvershield blinked owlishly up at his father, then slowly got up from his own chair, eyes shifting from startled and disbelieving to grim and determined. “As the heir apparent of the Silvershield Family, I am hereby exerting my right and _responsibility_ to contest the judgment of the head of the family with regards to this particular matter. Which is to say, I do not acknowledge your ruling as just, let alone appropriate given the ages of the two individuals involved.”

Horrified fascination from all corners.

That… that sounded more officious than anything Liia had seen or heard from the young man before. And with Entar having him present for many of their meetings over the past two years, in preparation for him taking his place eventually, that was saying something.

Given Entar’s speechlessly scandalised expression, she wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

Then again, Liia couldn’t exactly dismiss Eddard here. He _did_ have a point about the ages of the individuals involved.

“Now then!” Eddard said calmly, voice only barely straining under the weight of the countenance he was forcing himself to maintain. “Since no one bothered to actually _discuss_ _certain matters_ with any of the _relevant parties_ , I may as well be the one to take the first step towards addressing that oversight.” That business of ‘addressing certain matters’ over and done with, Eddard Silvershield turned his back on the Baldur’s Gate Council of Four and headed for the hallway door.

“Son, stop where you are right now!”

“That’s right, it would sit ill with me to act merely as a messenger in this,” the younger man mused out loud as he slowed down. “Perhaps I should offer my sword arm in addition to my best wishes.”

“Eddard, don’t even think about it!” Entar set off after him, only to falter when his son pulled a dagger out from the waist holster under his shirt.

“Come to think of it, there is one other person who has simply been _chafing_ under their so very dull life, not realising how lucky they are to have been born to wealth and comfort,” the younger man mused, stopping near the door and half-turning away from it. “Perhaps some practical experience will provide them with perspective, or even reveal they had the right idea all along. Either way, I imagine they will want to go on an _adventure_ in any case _…_ ” Without warning, he tossed his knife across the room, ending with it buried tip-first in the _other_ door leading out of the room. A sharp yelp was heard from beyond it. “Isn’t that _right_ little sister?”

“Meeep!” Scrambling noises were briefly heard, then total silence fell as Skie Silvershield made her escape. Or, well, tried. “Ow! I broke a nail!”

Liie Jannath buried her face in her hands.

“I’ll talk to you later, sister dear!” Eddard called as he resumed his walk towards his own destination. “We wouldn’t want to ignore any options, now would we? Now, all that’s left is to offer my services to our resident band of intrepid do-gooders.”

“Son, don’t you dare!”

Alas, with that final comment, Eddard Silvershield had already walked out the door.

“Eddard Silvershield, you come back in here right now!” And Entar Silvershield nearly literally ran out the door after him.

…

Liia Jannath stared at the empty doorway. She’d heard about sudden upsets to situations and even experienced more than her fair share that very afternoon, but somehow she couldn’t help but just stare in the wake of the latest such thing that had been inflicted upon her.

It was Belt who finally broke the silence. “You think we should tell Entar that his son was not really being serious about joining the dwarf and his group in their adventures?”

“It’s too late now,” Eltan said with a sigh.

Awkward silence followed.

“Why _didn’t_ we actually debrief the dwarf before having this meeting?” Moruene spoke again after a while.

“Probably the same reason Eddard never served in the Flaming Fist either, and therefore never learned how to give a proper report, assuming we’d even have thought to ask for one after everything that happened today,” Eltan’s voice bore a familiar long-suffering nuance. “Entar disapproved.”

“You know, sometimes I wonder if maybe his trading uses up all his intuitive ability, because I swear, he misreads every situation outside that context almost every single time,” Moruene complained. “Though I suppose he wasn’t _wrong_ about what a security risk this Cyrus Anwar is. Or, well, he was, but only because we are well, _well_ past the stage of mere risk.”

“I suppose we do have confirmation about the veracity of his accounts at least,” Belt mused somberly, looking at them in turn. “If he really _did_ proclaim his misbegotten status in public, he probably has no qualms about being truthful regarding anything else.”

“Or the opposite could be true…” Eltan said, at odds with his earlier statement that he believed everything written down on the papers littering their table.

Later, Liia Jannath would regain the calm needed to see the benefits in Cyrus Anwar’s particular brand of chaos being aimed in the direction of the Iron Throne and their various schemes, as opposed to the city of Baldur’s Gate. She would even manage to regain enough of her composure, as well as process the sheer implications of the planned attempts on her life and those of her fellows to a sufficient extent, that she could focus on the present. Even appreciate the humour in Bentley Mirroshade’s latest grouse fest over whatever Cyrus Anwar had just said.

As it was, while Belt and Eltan quietly contemplated the benefits and inevitable frustration that would come with revising the plans they had just spent the last hour and a half putting together, the only thing she herself could do in an attempt to bring some sanity to her life was try to set aside the larger matters, those that were impossible to solve in a single day, in favour of more minor, manageable ones. Such as the feud between Archion and Nemphre, or Ramazith’s desire to come into possession of a certain nymph which a different mage, Ragefast, was holding captive in his home after falling obsessively in love with her to the point where he didn’t realize her captivity was slowly killing her. It was one of several “plots against the lives and peace of various Baldurians” about which Cyrus Anwar conjured detailed informational sheets during their walk from the Merchant League back to the Silvershield estate.

Yes, she really _had_ been more rattled than she realised if being personally given those papers, and being there for their creation to boot, hadn’t been enough to make her wonder where and how the dwarf came up with the information he did.

“Well then,” Belt broke the silence, gathering his stack of informational sheets in several rolls and placing them into his bag. “If we’re adjourning, I believe the best course of action for myself will be to go commune with my God about the issues brought to our attention that we are _not_ equipped to deal with, such as this supposed alien plot to destroy the universe.” Even the self-controlled priest of the High Watcher couldn’t mask his whole incredulity at having to utter those words during a serious conversation. Nonetheless, he made no more comment and nodded to them in turn as he turned away, though he did stop near the door and gave them one last look before exiting. “And I suppose I’ll have to quietly forewarn the various clergies about the impending arrival of news regarding what Cyrus Anwar so _honestly_ shared about himself not so long ago, if Eddard’s word is to be believed. A crusade is the _last_ thing we need right now.”

Eltan groaned and rested his forehead into his hand as Belt disappeared from sight. “I swear, even the Time of Troubles wasn’t so troublesome. And not a word about puns, Moruene!”

It was perhaps unfair of her, given the success of the endeavour that the dwarf and his partisans dragged her into, but everything that had happened to her that day was enough to actually make her agree with Entar about one thing, if nothing else: that dwarf was a _menace_.

Then she thought about the assassins being contacted to kill her and her fellow Dukes, assassins which Cyrus Anwar may as well have been designed to counter, and she felt like cursing. It was looking more and more like none of them were going to have any restful nights for the foreseeable future no matter _what_ happened next.

Liia Jannath nearly swore aloud, but instead managed to control herself and settled for a mere sigh. No, if she did not lose her composure after that gnome’s illusion and everything else, she was not about to lose it here either. Instead, she would contain herself until she managed to get in range of an acceptable target, possibly even the self-proclaimed “Sage Extraordinaire” himself if he did something stupid in order to get that nymph he was so dead-set on turning into arcane ingredients.

Yes, better to behave like a proper lady and wait until she was home before she made something or someone explode, Liia was sure.


	25. Overture III: From Outside In

“So what **are** your tells?”

That had been Moruene’s, and through her the Dukes’, parting question after everyone else had teleported away.

“Pardon?”

“Belt says you and children of Outsiders, Gods or whatever else, always have some tell or other. I imagine most other Bhaalspawn are all about fighting, killing, murdering or whatnot, whether or not they have any physical marks, but with you I honestly can’t tell. If I didn’t already know you were one of the Murder God’s children, I’d never have guessed it.”

“Ah.”

“So? Come on, give me _something._ What’s your gimmick?”

He actually had to think about the answer for a few moments.

But then his mind wandered to the time when he scaled the main Candlekeep walls in order to reach Ulraunt’s balcony, and the consequences of that. Or when he went off to get cider for Winthrop only to scare Fuller into a dead faint after certain first-time events. Or that time when he went around Candlekeep after stealing Khelben’s cloak and the death and near-death it caused, not to mention the sheer audacity it subsequently led to the next morning. Then there was that short-lived trip outside the keep of a few days later during which he kicked a family out of their home, orphaned their oldest child, and even framed the second most powerful man in the world for murder at the same time. Or the various trips over the years to and from the Tower of Exaltation, with or without Gorion and Khelben Arunsun as supervisors. And he would, of course, never be able to forget the departure from Candlekeep of less than a week ago and what _that_ ended up escalating into…

“I go on walks.”

The pause could charitably be described as filled with pregnant disbelief.

“Excuse me?”

“You wanted to know what I do instead of whatever Bhaal’s other children supposedly do, which you expect consists of fighting, killing and murdering.” He shrugged. “I take unenthusiastic walks through the wilderness.” His past afternoon having brought one of the most unenthusiastic walks of all, seeing as he wouldn’t even have _been_ on it if Entar hadn’t kicked them out of his home. Well, not as early in the day anyhow, since Bentley’s shopping trip had been pre-arranged. “Whether natural or man-made, it doesn’t matter apparently, if the last day was any indication.”

“You call everything that happened this afternoon _a walk_?”

“A _particularly_ unenthusiastic walk,” Cyrus agreed.

And there were the strange looks he’d grown used to seeing in reaction to every other one of his sentences by the time he was five. “I’m not sure what else you want me to say.” Especially since the things that happened during his walks got increasingly bizarre and outrageous the less enthusiastic they were, or so it seemed. And that was possibly still just an understatement, considering that he’d jumped from accidentally orphaning, framing and killing a minimal number of individuals, to indirectly causing near-suicides via various failed attempts at enchanting, and later culminating in leaving a whole forest burning in the wake of his passage after multiple counts of self-defence killings, murder, and fratricide, even if that last one was still pending.

The patch of forest itself stretched over several good acres, as he himself had seen after flying over it not long ago.

The moment he took flight and left southwards out of Baldur’s Gate would have brought obvious relief to the officials seeing him off even without his ability to literally see into the soul of things.

At least the long hours of flight left him time to think, even though he took the chance to practice dimensional hop every other 30 seconds and significantly sped up his trip.

Watching the sunset now was a different experience compared to every other time he did it until just two days prior. Perhaps for the simple reason that it even _could_ be called an experience, as opposed to it merely happening while he was just… kind of there. Watching it from on high while in flight certainly added to the _experience_ , just as it had for the sunrise that same morning. Appreciation was finally something he could claim to feel personally, as opposed to just getting echoes off other people, if even that.

He deliberately did not follow that train of thought until the last sunbeam was gone from the sky. He wanted to _experience_ the experience without any conflicting feelings tainting it. It was, for all intents and purposes, his first sunset.

But even the slow descent of the sun behind the Sea of Swords had to end eventually, and he was left only with the glimmer of the vast waters, darkness, moonlight and wind for company as he slowly drifted down. Thinking about the past day. Contemplating. Reflecting.

Specifically, on his behaviour.

Insofar as it was even _his_.

Now, alone and not in proximity to anyone or anything with mind and emotions of its own, he could look back on his conduct the past two days and realise how much of it wasn’t even _his_. As complete as his ability to feel desires and emotions of his own now was, he also hadn’t stopped actually reflecting and echoing the desires and feelings of others. Worse, it had completely left his notice that he was still doing it, the foreign feelings and impulses melding with or interposing on his own without him even realising. Even though he was still as aware of everyone’s souls and feelings as before. Better even.

He’d been blunt and borderline antagonistic with Entar because the man himself felt the urge to be blunt and antagonistic towards him, and he subconsciously emulated that state of affairs. Or imitated it, since he couldn’t see how that could be a thing worth improving. He’d “tattled” on Entar to Liia Jannath because he’d unwittingly evoked _Eltan’s_ penchant for tossing his friends to the wolves in the name of irony. And because the Duchess herself had the sort of sufficiently good-natured mindset that would and _did_ consistently respond to such behaviour positively or, at worst, neutrally. All things he’d consciously known the moment he laid eyes on them, but at the same time he somehow did _not_ notice them affecting him. How the emotional emanations influenced his conduct. Warped him…

If ever she found out that his ability to make decisions purely his own was now _more_ at risk than it used to be, Imoen would doubtlessly express her opinion on that particular issue by laughing herself sick, Cyrus just knew it. If he told her his current dilemma, she would probably collapse and start rolling on the floor too.

Namely, what was he even supposed to do about this? He’d already tried blocking foreign thoughts and emotions psionically, if that was even the right term, but it didn’t fix the problem since it was spiritual interaction he was dealing with, which went a level of magnitude deeper in terms of existential substrate. It made him wonder if perhaps this was something _everyone_ did, only without realising it. That left thinking twice about what he said and felt from now on as the obvious answer. On the other hand, overthinking things was the extreme he’d been practically _embodying_ since the temple fiasco with the Bhaalite priestess. The only reason he didn’t get influenced by the feelings and wishes of others up to his confrontation with Bhaal’s Vestige was because he didn’t _care_ about them any more than he cared about anything, and he lacked any desires and driving will of his own regardless. But now…where did he draw the line?

Well, like everything else this would probably just get better with self-awareness and practice.

At least his adventure over the past day turned out reasonably well. Granted, he did get repeatedly stabbed and attacked with magic, then nearly caused a district-wide riot, not to mention got himself and the others effectively kicked out not just the Silvershield manor but the whole _city,_ even if the Dukes didn’t have the grounds to declare it outright and were trying to be circumspect about it… But those things had happened because he chose efficiency and the saving of lives over discretion, which he still considered the right course of action even now, with the benefit of both hindsight and a clear head.

Going after the Ogre mage could probably have been done with more planning, or perhaps should have been avoided since it brought too many risks considering the kind of information he was carrying and for whom. Sensing death odds nullified most of the risks, granted, but still… Yet the same logic could be applied to his hunting down of Neb, more so perhaps, yet even now he was fully certain that going after him was the right call.

He’d already decided one thing at least. Whatever the future brought, he would _not_ accept being practically locked out of action due to being at odds with other powerful and influential individuals, or otherwise engaged in “matters of great importance.” He’d already seen what prioritising the bigger picture did to people. The Four Grand Dukes of Baldur’s Gate had somehow decided that letting the Shadow Thieves operate in the city was acceptable, that their depredations on their own people were an acceptable price so long as they passed information, and yet the thieves didn’t or wouldn’t do that regarding the latest and greatest threat to their rule and their very lives. Duke Eltan had missed his own police force and mercenary company being subverted right under his nose, despite having access to not one but two mages capable of reading minds and seeing through any illusions and deceptions. Khelben Arunsun had been close to slipping off a very unfortunate slippery slope up until just over a decade ago, a slope he hadn’t fully climbed out of even now. And Elminster Aumar was already at the point where couldn’t or wouldn’t do more than pop in with cryptic and ultimately obsolete warnings when it came to anything that didn’t happen in Cormyr or otherwise within the bounds of Shadowdale itself, assuming he actually did anything proactively even there.

It was fortunate that Eltan’s recent plans to set up a puppet government in Tethyr didn’t amount to anything, despite the reduced rates he hired out the Flaming Fist for in that region. The Four Grand Dukes didn’t exactly have the firmest grip on their _own_ city at the moment. It remained to be seen if the expedition to the newly discovered continent of Maztica turned out any better, but considering that it was ultimately an _invasion_ , Cyrus wasn’t exactly sympathetic to Fort Flame’s existence, no matter how inspired Eltan was by Balduran when sending the Flaming Fist “exploring.” Not that they had much chance of handling the situation any worse than the Amnians did, Cyrus thought grimly. With the Time of Troubles having taken place just 20 years before and _this_ more recent mess with General Cordell’s expedition which devastated the native peoples through foreign diseases and the ruthlessness of the invaders, it was little wonder that the reputation of Helm and his clergy was in tatters.

It was, perhaps, equally little wonder that Baldur’s Gate and Amn were nearing war after just several months since the Iron Crisis began, considering how similar the two regions were in terms of leadership and temperament. For all that Amn was considered by Baldur’s Gate a country led by unscrupulous traders out only to make coin, the leaders of Baldur’s Gate certainly didn’t seem to act all that differently in the grand scheme of things.

Cyrus wondered if perhaps Baldur’s Gate wasn’t the only city being subverted.

But that, at least, was not a problem anyone expected him to do anything about. He had several things in need of doing already lined up anyway, most urgent being the task of finally landing in front of the Candlekeep gatehouse. He could have flown anywhere into the Keep, in spite of the wards against such things – he’d tested it – but he wasn’t about to deliberately disturb the peace of the only home he’d known since the Temple fiasco.

The dwarf cut his flight short and allowed himself to freefall. It was an exhilarating sensation, the first time he’d felt anything so intense, and he immediately decided that the next time he did this would be from higher up than just thirty meters. Practicing faster forms of flight had definitely gone up on his list of leisure activities as well.

Five meters from the ground, his flight reactivated and his momentum abruptly cut off, bleeding out into the air and the ground he came to a halt upon in a three-point landing. His cloak languidly fluttered down over and around him, and the rustling of the grass made for an interesting counterpoint to the sudden jerks and flickers of the souls around him, both the known souls manning the gates as well as the ever present mass of pilgrims camped within sight of the main keep entrance at all times.

The only unexpected thing was the familiar presence coming along the path that led down to the seashore, escorting whoever the second soul belonged to. Not because it was unusual for people to come by that way – there were almost always a seeker or two sentenced to gather shellfish from the bottom of the sea by hand due to mishandling or damaging a book or other – but because the soul seemed unhappy.

No, not just unhappy.

Devastated.

Come to think of it, none of the Avowed manning the gate were glowing as brightly or peacefully as they normally did either, and neither did the populace of the keep itself. Cyrus stretched his attention past the first set of walls and into the nearest lodgings to – yes, the Keep as a whole seemed emotionally dimmer, if that was possible. Was this just him perceiving things differently due to his own different perspective? No, there would have been more noticeable differences in how he saw and sensed the Friendly Arm denizens the morning after the Slayer confrontation if that was the reason. At least he could be sure it was not due to any murders or deaths inflicted upon or by the Candlekeep denizens, since he would have read it off everyone nearby from the first glimpse of them if such was the case. But then why was Amanther looking so shocked to see him? And why was he hesitant to approach?

The self-same sensations and colours finally fit together like the surreal puzzle they always were.

Oh.

Wait.

“Cyrus,” Amanther whispered, stunned, almost.

Yes.

“Cyrus Anwar…”

Oh, he definitely knew what _this_ was.

“Little Prince, you _live_!”

Absolutely _ridiculous._

“-.  .-“

“Come on, look lively!” Hull barked at the individual he was escorting. “We still need to get these shellfish into cold storage.” He got an exhausted glare in response, but he was far past caring about his feelings. Or her feelings. Its. Whatever! “None of that now! Just because the other hothead got himself chewed up by some freak fish is no excuse for returning with only half a pair of baskets full. If you didn’t want to waste your days gathering shellfish then you shouldn’t have gotten into an altercation in the library. Then that rare volume of Nether Scroll Research wouldn’t have been damaged and you wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.”

The person seemed on the verge of snapping something or maybe even going on a whole diatribe about whatever insults the half-elf now languishing in the house of healing had supposedly hurled his way. Or her way… _their_ way. Or whatever else had come between them in the library that caused whatever altercation got them sentenced to gather shellfish as reparation for the book damage. Thearabho had given him the essentials after he drew the short straw but Hull was too annoyed, too _incensed_ even, to listen when he was appointed guard dog to this female. Male. Whatever, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that _this_ was what he’d drawn the short straw for. It was enough to make him want to strangle the both of them. Yes, even the half-elf that had to be carted off to the healers earlier that day after being chewed up a couple dozen times by one of those weird, man-eating fish that had recently evolved from rumour to fact.

A hotheaded… whatever couldn’t handle some prodding questions about their gender, religion and profession from a visitor of a different cultural background who also happened to be too curious and sceptical for anyone’s good. This was why Hull couldn’t be where he needed to be to attend the gathering he needed to be present for.

This was what he was _missing Cyrus’ wake_ for.

Hull felt his hands twitch with the impulse to throttle someone. He very much wanted, needed, to throttle a specific someone, no, _two_ specific someones, for a moment.

But only a moment.

The anger burned itself out almost instantly, leaving behind only the same feel of chilled darkness on the inside of his chest, and a taste like ash in his mouth. That deep-carved sorrow that had been with him for the past two days. He’d stubbornly refused to believe the worst before then. He’d erred on the side of hope when he and the others searched the woods, or what was left of them after the brief but devastating fire. He’d rationalised away the shattered and burnt human remains because they were unidentifiable and there were no dwarven bones anywhere nearby, while there were plenty of ogre ones here and there. He’d bullheadedly refused to think the inconclusive magical sweeps could possibly hint at the worst outcome, and he even managed to keep some mental explanations going when every messaging spell anyone tried to use failed to make contact with neither man nor dwarf.  Even knowing that the remains had been magically tampered with to prevent contact via Speak with the Dead hadn’t been enough to break his self-delusion.

But when _Tethtoril_ pulls out the best divinations available to mages or priests alike and produces results that can basically be summed up as “not a trace in this world…”

He’d cried.

Not before he fell quiet, finished his watch shift and went to his sleeping quarters to punch the wall until his fists bled, but he’d cried.

He hadn’t though he would, he hadn’t cried for anyone else, ever, for any reason, but then he remembered a 10-year-old Cyrus pondering how curious it was that emotions could be powerful enough to shatter the composure of all but the most strong-willed of people. How curious and how _ironic_ it was that the latter were the ones who missed out most because of it. He’d never seen souls “shed dark and viscous misery as quickly as they did when they had a good laugh or cry,” the little dwarf had said to that female seeker that was well on her way towards suffering death in childbirth along with her son. Which Cyrus inevitably saw coming the moment he laid eyes on her and made the requisite comments when Hull asked him why he found her so fascinating to stare at.

Incidentally, the woman only became a grief-stricken, sobbing mess after Cyrus flatly answered that question within her hearing, leading to wails of anguish in the middle of the gardens, a very uncomfortable chain of awkward reassurances by Hull, and their total failure to do anything about the aforementioned loud female sobbing. Sobbing intersped with the occasional, barely strung together word about how the only reason she was in Candlekeep was because she’d sold everything she ever owned in order to procure a tome valuable enough to gain her entry, because a seeress had told her she and her child would both perish but she did not accept that and would and did give everything to find a solution for her child, but that was the last day she still had in the keep after which she’d have to leave but she hadn’t found what she needed and once she left she would be destitute because the father was a no good lout who made himself scarce and what was she going to do!?

Cyrus, heavens bless the hopeless little abomination in a dwarf’s skin, only thought to ask why she hadn’t had a good cry before, seeing as it was proving to be so very good for her soul the longer it went on. Hull and the tearful woman both had gaped in shock at hearing him say that but the boy didn’t care about that any more than he cared about anything so he just kept talking. Souls always glowed and burned so much more brightly and healthily after emotional breakdowns, the 10-year-old boy said while wondering aloud if feeling grief would do something to his own “bleak/dark/nothing” and let him glow a little too. To add flavour to the increasingly sinister scene, Cyrus had said all that in that bizarre tone of his, smooth and sepulchral and somehow no different from someone about to dissect you on an operating table while you were still conscious.

Hull had been horrified by the blunt and bizarre logic and even reprimanded Cyrus for his insensitive words, trying to explain that words had consequences and making someone cry was not the right thing to do.

Only to get that odd, puzzled look in response. “But she’s crying because her baby’s going to die in the womb strangled by his own umbilical cord. Isn’t that okay? Why not cry? It only means the reason is important enough to deserve it, doesn’t it?”

There was not even the barest chance back then to contemplate anything past the first sentence due to the commotion caused by his comment and the hopeful fervor it ignited in the woman. The fool woman who’d not even thought to figure out why her child would be stillborn, having jumped straight into trying to research a magical solution without even knowing the problem.

With all the running around, the frantic questioning that Cyrus was put through by the healers afterwards, and all the preparations to cut the woman up and untangle the cord from around the boy’s neck before it was too late (which would have been in a week or so, when it grew too thick to allow blood flow through the stranglehold as the healers later put it), Hull completely forgot about the rest of what Cyrus had said.

It was funny, Hull supposed, how the oddest things could come to mind after so many years. After Tethtoril shared the results of his spells two days before, the last words came back to him and Hull couldn’t find any way to argue against them.

Why not cry indeed, if the reason was important enough to deserve it?

The next day, yesterday really, he’d nearly blown up at the people who let Gorion and Cyrus leave on their own in the first place. Only nearly though. He may not be able to see or feel the feelings and intentions of people like Cyrus did, but he’d spent so much time around him and prodded him to speak about what he saw in, of and about anyone and everyone enough times to form a fairly accurate idea of how their minds worked. How their _souls_ would be working right now.

He knew and could even see it on Amanther, Llarth, Thearabho and even Tethtoril himself, how they questioned their decision to let Gorion go on such short notice, how they were beating themselves up for not bidding the man to stay at least a day or two longer and prepare. How they were cursing themselves for not heeding Cyrus’ misgivings – spoken _without prompting_ , which was a rare enough thing on its own – just because he admitted to them not being real foresight. And because of those two idiots that had been teleported into the keep, can’t forget them.

Shank and Carbos had since been executed and entombed in the catacombs, their spirits tied to the grounds and under a geas to protect Candlekeep for a hundred years. Served them right, even if it was very likely that the geas would compel them to stay quiet, still and out of the way in order to protect everyone and everything else from their own incompetence, but it was the least they deserved in Hull’s opinion.

The Watcher forced himself back to the present when the person he was overseeing adjusted the hold on one of the shellfish baskets. The… whatever seemed to be flagging, which was ridiculous. Considering his… her… its, to the Abyss with it, _their_  profession and the boasts they made during the altercation that got them into this mess, physical strength was the last thing they should have lacked.

Before he could actually say or do anything about it though, Cyrus fell from the sky.

Hull froze.

He may have been walking behind the person he was supervising but he still had a perfectly clear view of the path ahead, it having levelled off long ago. They were actually within a dozen yards of the gatehouse when Cyrus dropped from the sky.

Cyrus had just dropped from the sky.

Hull stared, speechless and stunned beyond reason and hope.

He _continued_ to stare, speechless and stunned beyond reason and hope, as the dwarf came to a halt just before hitting the ground and landed lightly, cloak fluttering around him after his momentary flight. His mind failed to reengage even when he heard Amanther speak.

Then Cyrus looked up at the mage, blinked and, in defiance of anything and everything that Hull ever expected from or knew about him, the dwarf palmed his face.

And as if he hadn’t just displayed more emotional depth in one second than he had for the past 20 years, Cyrus Anwar walked over to Amanther, pulled his hands apart and out from under his own sleeves, reached into the mage’s left sleeve and pulled the Rod of Absorption he apparently had stashed inside somehow or other.

Then, under the gaping stares of both wizard and Watcher, as well as the half a dozen other people arrayed around them, the ridiculous dwarf pulled several balls of silvery energy from the rod, held the item out for Amanther to take back – which the man did with the most perplexed look he’d ever worn – snapped his fingers – some ward or other rose to surround the quartet of dwarf and three humans – then turned around to face vaguely eastward, face screwed up in a look of faint but such earnest and _genuine_ exasperation that it left Hull awestruck.

But this was Cyrus Anwar, so of _course_ he’d shatter the moment in the most ludicrous manner possible.

The dwarf manipulated the arcane energy in some way or other, used it to draw some arcane marks or other in the air around him, then sketched a wide circle with his arm and seemingly forced the energy to scatter with a sharp gesture.

And after closing his eyes in focus – or expectation? – for a few moments, the dwarf opened them and spoke. “Three Archmages, four days, yet none of you even thought of using a Sending to contact Candlekeep. Father, why do you _do_ this to me?”

At some point Hull had assumed the semblance of a gaping idiot but he couldn’t spare the mental effort to notice that, or do anything else for that matter after hearing those words spoken in a tone of such overwrought plea.

Then the voice of Gorion himself suddenly answered, finally jolting some activity into Hull’s mind. “Son, what? Where are… Do you mean to say you’re at Candlekeep now!? What on Faerun’s cataclysm-battered earth are you doing there when-“ and that was the spell’s word limit.

Cyrus Anwar stared blankly into the distance. “Unbelievable.”

There was silence not unlike in a graveyard. Oddly fitting, Hull thought distractedly, seeing as Cyrus looked like a Lathandrite priest whose faith in mankind had just gone the way of the sacrificial goats.

Finally, the dwarf sighed, faced Amanther and spoke with his normal, blank tone for the first time since his sudden arrival, but even then it sounded different from what he’d sounded like his whole life. Calm instead of apathetic.

Flat instead of dead. “I believe this constitutes sufficient evidence towards the conclusion that the _only_ logical thing to do moving forward is to come up with a more reliable way of long-term communication. This would allow me to keep in contact with all relevant parties, since all _other_ relevant parties have proven unable to relay a simple update despite having had hours to do exactly that.”

With a thick, raw keen that the human vaguely recognised as his own, Hull broke into a run, sprinted past the person he was supposed to be watching – who’d been standing and staring just like the rest of them – and only came to a halt when he had his arms around the shorter man in an embrace that was as tight as it was desperate.

The next hour was hectic, involving everything from Hull tearfully babbling his relief and remonstrations, to Hull watching in teary amusement as Cyrus got dogpiled by half a dozen different men after walking in on them while they were holding his own wake. Well, and his father’s, but that went without saying. Though the infuriating little midget had the nerve to stand to the side and even eat a seedcake while waiting for the morose, heartbroken people to notice he was there. Which didn’t happen until Thearabho worked the nerve to lift his eyes from where he was contemplating his navel and walked to the front of the empty coffins to speak in remembrance of the dearly departed, only to gape in shock the moment he turned to face everyone else due to the impossible sight of the dwarf munching on his snack next to the table near the entrance to the House of Mourning.

Cyrus even had the brazen nerve to take the initiative and march over to hug the Gatewarden “because you looked like you needed it,” no by your leave no nothing, as if that wasn’t the most absurd thing that could possibly happen. Hull himself had been completely stunned all over again at the sheer audacity of what he was seeing.

Oh, the man wouldn’t regret on _whit_ the vindication he felt when he saw how dishevelled and outright baffled Cyrus looked upon finally being allowed to escape the miniature riot. The man scoffed to himself as he watched from the side. What did he expect, honestly? He’d grown on people over the past 20 years. Kind of like an infection. Or fungus.

Outrageous little miscreant.

He supposed that he should worry a bit more about the “subversive elements” under the command of “foreign organisations composed of ill-meaning individuals not excluding the blood relatives of certain parties” which Cyrus told Amanther were deliberately trying to start a war between Amn and Baldur’s Gate, but Hull honestly didn’t have it in him to care about any of that at the moment.

Whether because of the news reaching him or because he was always planning to be present for at least part of the wake himself, all of that would be Tethtoril’s problem soon enough anyway.

Then he caught the tail-ends of Cyrus’ response to the question asked by Karan, the only monk other than Parda who hadn’t joined in on the _very_ uncharacteristic roughhousing, and Hull wondered at whether there was anything left in the world that could be termed sanity.

“WHAT IN ALL THE ABYSS DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE LEAVING AGAIN IN THE MORNING!?”

“-.  .-“

“Bwaaaaah!”

Oh for… seriously?

“Waah-hah-hah!”

It was all Thearabho could do to watch in shock as Reevor bawled his eyes out.

“Waah-hah-hah-hah-hah-hah-sob!”

Decades ago, Winthrop had set up in his inn something known as “The Loudmouth’s Table” which was designed and magically warded specifically for these and many other sorts of situations, but the silencing barrier was somehow straining to do its job despite there being just one person “expressing their sorrow” within its bounds.

“Sob-sob-sob-sob-waaaah!”

Oh Torm, why? Crying was _not_ supposed to sound that way!

“Who’s gunna walk about like a creepy ghoul’n broad daylight fr’m now on!?” The old soldier wailed amid crocodile tears, deep in his cups. Considering how deep and gravelly his voice usually was, the sound was even more horrifying than his normal, surly hollering. “Whassit the old man even thought takin’im out inta tha big, nasty world! He wuz jus’ a 20-year-old striplin’!” There seemed to be snot mixed in with the foam of his beer but Reevor didn’t seem to notice as he chugged what had to be his dozenth mug in the past 5 minutes. “How’s an old dwarf s’pposed ta claim he managed ta tough out the most horrifyin’ abomination against all dwarv’n kind if ‘e jus’ goes off and gets ‘imself killed!?” The squat man tearfully shook his beer mug at the universe, beer splashing out and all over the table and the floor with every swing. Then Reevor just slammed the mug on the table and let his head fall on it with a loud thunk. “Who’s gunna fight the rats in the storehouse with meeeeee!?”

Thearabho stood there gaping in abject disbelief at the sheer absurdity of what he was witnessing.

Perhaps it was a good idea he hadn’t insisted any harder that the dwarf come to the actual wake if _this_ was what they all had to look forward to?

“Reevor-“

“Don’t ya Reevor me!” The dwarf slurred, surging to his feet. Or trying to. The heavy oak-carved chair didn’t quite agree with him so he had to struggle several times before he managed to push it back enough. “Don’t ya be reevorin’ me ya… ya… oversized dwarfling assassin…” The dwarf wavered on his feet and squinted angrily up at the human. “I mean, ya oversized _assassin_ o’ dwarflings!” He nodded decisively at his amendment, almost toppling off his feet. “He wouldn’nae gone off if ye’d just shut yer trap! Neither o’ those idiots woulda gone off in the night like blind moles if just one’o’ya bigshots had actually agreed with the wee lad instead of just… just… yes-manning that poor excuse of a beardcheater!”

So even Reevor knew about Elminster’s letter as well as about him, Tethtoril and the others basically agreeing to do as it said in spite of Cyrus’ uncharacteristic misgivings. Was nothing kept a proper secret in the Keep anymore? Thearabho despaired internally.

“Listen you drunken dwarf, look around you-“

“Wuzzat!?” Reever slurred angrily, spittle flying and getting tangled up in his moustache. “Insultin’ muh race now, ya, ya…!” Reevor attempted a punch in his direction but missed by a foot and a half. “Ya think ah should be ‘shamed ta be a dwarf, do ya? Whadda YOU know you, you… longshanks!”

Sometimes it felt like Candlekeep got more and more surreal and undisciplined every day. Even when Cyrus Anwar _wasn’t_ there to make it happen, though the Gatewarden supposed it was still his fault in this case. Somewhat.

Not that the train of thought was in any way relevant now.

“Amazing,” said younger dwarf uttered from right next to him, though he addressed Reevor instead of him. Reevor, who hadn’t noticed Cyrus was there despite the younger dwarf having been present for the past few minutes, having entered the Inn the same time Thearabho himself did.

“Yelp!” Reevor jumped in place, almost falling over for real if not for Cyrus quickly reaching out to steady him by the shoulder, briefly. “Wh... where’d ya come from ya, ya… whoa, ya’ve gotten bright, kid. And… and… why’re there three o’ya?” Leaning forward until he nearly teetered, the old dwarf abruptly pulled back – he avoided crashing on his back due to the chair behind him – and whirled… well, swayed back to face the human. “Sod that! Ye’re just tryin’ ta distract me, aren’t ya, ya… horneless ram!”

The Gatewarden forced himself to ignore the crashing wave of booze breath that smashed into him and looked down at the dwarf flatly. Reevor couldn’t possibly be this oblivious, could he? There shouldn’t be enough drink in the world to leave a dwarf so… so…

“Don’t ya give me tha’ look! And tell yer twin ta mind his own damn business too, and yer triplet to… to… get me more ale while ya’re at it!”

Apparently, there _was_ enough drink in the world to leave a dwarf so drunk. Reevor seemed to have achieved such horrendous amounts of slurring and near blackouts that it was a wonder he could even make himself understood at this point. He’d reached an entirely new dimension of drunk that Therabho did not know existed. Reevor had never been a blackout drunk, so apparently this was where one went when they weren’t. Tipsy laid at the foot of the mountain, drunk half way up. Smashed was just below the mountaintop, and now Reevor was on the very tip of the mountain leaping up into clouds[.](https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/19554009/)

“Remarkable.”

Thearabho’s sarcastic inner commentary came to a crashing halt when he heart Cyrus speak about the drunken sot’s behaviour with what could only be utter _reverence_.

Cyrus gazed at Reevor with something akin to _wonder_ for some baffling reason Thearabho couldn’t even begin to- “Out of everyone save Ulraunt and for a brief time Khelben Arunsun, you’ve been consistently the one among my acquaintances who liked me the least, yet you’re just one of two actually shedding tears.”

The Gatewarden didn’t expect the pang he felt at those words but he felt one go through him regardless.

“’Course I’m bloody cryin’ ya damn brat!” Reevor turned and hollered in Cyrus’ face, coating his beard with even more spittle. The drops that would have landed on Cyrus face stopped mid-air, but Reevor didn’t notice with the state he was in. “Why’d ya think I was always on yer arse ta do somethin’ useful? Ya think I always ragged on ya for not being pro-por-prrr-phr—fer not doin’ anythin’ unless someone told ya jus’ cuz I was a jerk!? I ain’t no jerk ya damn brat! I’m the most upph-usp-upsanti- the best dwarf ya’ll ever know! Why’d ya think I never let ya skimp on clearin’ out them rats in the storehouse? Ya think I was jus’ bein a jerk!?”

“No.”

“It ain’t jus’ cuz I’m a jerk ya damned brat!” More spittle joined the previous one in hovering in front of Cyrus face as Reevor completely failed to register the response. Or that he’d just admitted to being a jerk in complete opposition to everything else he’d just ranted about for the past few minutes. “It was becuz o’how damned horr-hohr- cuz’o how Moradin damned weird ya were! It was cuz’ ya were always so morbid! Like… like… like that cat ya splattered all o’er the storehouse tha’ one time!” Reevor had stumbled over closer to where Cyrus was standing, which brought him outside the bounds of the silencing perimeter, meaning that the whole common room was staring at them now. Not that it stopped him any. “Course I didn’t like ya, y-y-yo-…ya little sap! Ya try livin’ all night and day as weirded out as I wuz while tryin’ ta figure out what ta do ta distract ya from the idea o’ just giving up on yer… yer… creepy, misbegott’n self! Ya try livin’ in the same walls as a little, messed up dwarfling like ya and not start ta care about ya when ye behave like… like… like a hopeless, handicapped puppy!”

Cyrus somehow found that whole diatribe endearing for some obscene reason. Why else would he smile so softly at his older but shorter kinsman like that? Thearabho tried and failed to make sense of what was happening with little success as he gaped down from one dwarf to the other, eyes agog.

“Ya hopeless, handicapped little puppy!” Reevor wailed, falling on the younger dwarf in a tearful bearhug and promptly resuming his earlier status as a tearfully sobbing mess, bawling his eyes out in Cyrus’ right shoulder. “Ya always walked around withou’ knowin’ wha’ livin’ even is and tried ta do the right thing without ever actu’lly undestandin’ what even wuz tha right thing! Always tryin’ ta please yer da’ but never managing it cuz o’ how damned _messed up_ y’are! And then when tha’ little devil of a girl came ya only got worse! Even after yer’ da’ and that nutcase of a teacher o’ yers took ya in hand ya only got creepier and more ridicul’s! Every year ya just did and said incr-inc- more outrageous nons’nse! Every year ya learned anythin’ ya got yer hands on, everythin anyone got the’r hands on, but ya just got _worse_ at undestandin anythin’ even though ya got better at fakin’ it!”

Thearabho’s breath stalled at being so unexpectedly blindsided by that burst of impossible insight and his eyes locked on the sight of Cyrus Anwar who was calmly holding the other dwarf up around the middle.

“And n-now they’re tellin’ me ya d-died!” Reevor bawled. “E-evr’one’s s-s-sayin’ ya d-died! S’not fair!”

The Gatewarden gaped all over again. Reevor was sobbing in Cyrus’ clothes and was literally being held up by the other dwarf but he still hadn’t gotten around to realising that meant Cyrus was alive, somehow.

“S’not riiiiiiight!” The old soldier wailed, snot dribbling from his nose all over Cyrus’ shoulder. “Ya dinnae live long enough! Ya still had thirty years ta screw yer head’on straight ‘fore ya shoulda even been considered an adult. Ya shoulda had thirty years to-… to… s’not _fair!_ ” Some spark of anger burst out of his chest but it drowned in the blubbering, tearful meltdown almost as soon as it came. “S-shoulda had more t-time f-fer… fer Moradin ta figure out what ta d-do with y-ya…” As if upon some omen, Reevor’s legs gave out and he would have collapsed if not for Cyrus having prepared in advance to hold him up. “Moradin shoulda done more for ya…” the wobbly man sniffled miserably. “Moradin shoulda done somethin’ fer ya… Shoulda hammered some sense into ya. Then you coulda… you coulda… we coulda told propa’ stories, drunk propa’ ale and done propa’ drills on those _bloody cat traitors_ and we woulda’ finally KILLED ALL O’ THOSE DAMNED RATS!”

With that final howl that left the ears of everyone in the Inn ringing, Reevor of Candlekeep passed out in the arms of the young kinsman whose death he was bewailing. And that sentence somehow even made a perverse sort of sense, which only wreaked more havoc on whatever was left of Thearabho’s ability to suspend his disbelief. Not even the worst of Imoen’s early story drafts had tried his patience and credulity so thoroughly, which was saying something.

If the Gatewarden had known this was the situation that was waiting for him when Gorion’s ward did that “look into the distance thing” of his, as Hull called it, and said he needed to “put an end to unnecessary sorrow and loss of face,” he might have decided to just go with the others and help bring Cyrus’ many enchantment mishaps out of storage instead. At least there he only had to worry about messed Clubs of Skull Bashing “enchanted” to compel wielders to bash their heads against the nearest vertical surface until there was no more brain to exert compulsions over.

Cyrus smiled softly at the drunken mess weighing him down and picked him up like a groom would a bride, which sparked inside Thearabho a lot _less_ amusement than it should have.

“I’ll take him to bed if that’s alright with you sir.”

The Gatewarden did his best to not make it clear just how strange he found the lad’s all too positive reaction to his kinsman’s blubbering diatribe. He was probably staring into peoples’ souls again, and maybe it was a good thing that Cyrus was so focused on the drunkard instead of him. Hopefully he would be able to sort out his conflicted feelings before-

“That’s not a good color on you, sir.”

Or not.

Cyrus looked up at him. “How much weight would you say my honest opinion holds with you, sir?”

Thearabho found himself seriously considering the question, more so than ever before. Hearing the lad talk now, and showing proper respect because he wanted to rather than simply because it was expected, went a long way towards helping him give an answer he was confident in. “Quite a bit.”

“Then you should know that your sword made literally all the difference.” The dwarf gazed at him earnestly. “Father and I both would have died if not for you.”

Something dark and icy which had grown thick and hard over the past days, something which had only grown more gnarly and viscous with Reevor’s diatribe, suddenly cracked and began to thaw. It felt like a clawing grip around his chest suddenly loosed.

Cyrus’ calm look shifted into a small, content smile. “That’s better,” he murmured. “That colour suits you far better than the others.”

Thearabho absolutely, positively needed to _find out what the bloody hells had happened_ over the past few days. “I hate it when you cheat like that.”

“Not as often as you’d like others to think,” the dwarf continued to gaze at him with that eerie, all-knowing look. “And definitely not now.”

“No,” the man admitted. “Not now.”

Reevor snorted in Cyrus’ arms and snuggled deeper into his bosom. Then he started snoring. Loudly.

Thearabho snorted in amusement himself and followed Cyrus as he left the inn with his strange burden, then turned his footsteps not towards the living quarters but the main keep instead. He and most of the others who were at the wake would have a long night ahead of them, not for the original reason but one to do with their resident godchild all the same. Normally he wouldn’t be supervising what was essentially cargo shuffling, but considering the contents of those crates and chests that the other monks were getting out of locked storage and bringing up to Gorion’s laboratory in the Tower of Exaltation, the man was determined to be directly involved in everything those men and Cyrus did over the next few hours. Hopefully his particular brand of expertise would not be needed, but better to err on the safe side than to later find out some fool monk had managed to grab what they shouldn’t and hurt themselves or others because of it.

Cursed magical items were serious business, especially when it was the divine essence of the God of Murder that empowered them.

It wouldn’t be until close to breakfast time the next morning that he’d find out the irony of his thoughts.

He was just inside the door of the laboratory, directing Theodon and the lockbox he was carrying towards the workbench where the more hazardous items were arranged. He’d been doing this in Cyrus’ stead all night, and had even managed to manfully stop staring after just a few minutes at how the dwarf systematically drained the essence out of all those misbegotten things one by one. The lad was in a hurry apparently, and since there didn’t seem to be any impact on his psyche from all the… devouring… Thearabho let him do as he pleased. Of course, he and Tethtoril had _also_ made sure to contact Gorion throughout the night and double check the core elements of Cyrus’ story, but since the lad himself hadn’t called them out on it, the human decided it wasn’t worth bringing up. Amanther, Parda, Karan, Tethtoril and everyone else agreed with him, so despite the fact that Ulraunt hadn’t even been roused from sleep and given an update on matter, that was that as far as the Gatewarden was concerned. If nothing else, he would sleep easier knowing that the keep wasn’t harbouring the most dangerous collection of dark magical objects outside the Underdark anymore.

Besides, with the dwarf’s now… healthy mind, any relapse would have been painfully obvious.

That was when he heard hollering coming up the tower stairs.

“That weird dream last night better not have been a prank if it was real because if it is I swear to _Moradin_ I-”

Thearabho only had a few seconds for the chill to go down his spine before a dishevelled, squinty-eyed, utterly hungover Reevor barrelled into the lab like a runaway cart.

The former inquisitor saw the present flash before his eyes with horrifying clarity. Theodon, just inside the door where he couldn’t be seen from outside but still not far away enough to avoid collision. Cyrus on the far side of the room, at the end of the long worktable and deeply immersed in the process of draining and assimilating essence, silver electrical arcs and fire flickering and flowing from his fingers into a small knife and back. And Thearabho himself, too far into the room to stop the impending disaster.

The Gatewarden blanched. “Reevor, _stop!_ ”

Too late.

The dwarf barrelled into the room and crashed into Theodon, who lost his balance and staggered forward under the weight of the chest he was bringing up, then stumbled outright with a panicked shout. He half-fell, half-ran across half the room and stopped his fall only when the front side of the lockbox smashed into the side of the table, breaking the lock – corroded by the sheer nature of the divine enchantments of the items inside – with sheer weight and scattering the top-most bundles all over the table. The misenchanted items cascaded in all directions, all over the items that had been carefully arrayed there over the course of the past few hours on account of them being the most dangerous and essence-rich, which was why Cyrus had decided to leave them for last.

A ball of obsidian fell on top of the table and rolled to a stop just inches away with an inward pulse of unlight that seemed to swallow all color yet making not even the slightest sound, but that wasn’t important. What was important was that the angle of impact had been _just_ right to send a particular implement sliding out and away across the long, lacquered table, then off the edge of the table entirely.

The edge of the table just a foot away from Thearabho himself.

The human felt his old reflexes kick in even as his rational mind tried to tell him that surrendering to them was the worst possible thing that could happen. Unfortunately, his reflexes won out just as the item became airborne.

A battle-honed body lunged forward, callused fingers wrapped around cold brass, and a rational mind went unheard and silent under the glint of metal carved into the shape of a small shallow bowl with small tines etched into its farthest edge.

“-.  .-“

The saltwater clung to her, weighing down her hair and feeling like a thick layer of muck all over her skin. Hopefully this wouldn’t turn out to be one of those times when she wound up carrying it around with her all day. Given the events of the prior evening, though, and the fire it seemed to light up under most of the Candlekeep monks, she wasn’t too hopeful she’d get a chance to get a wash no matter how short or cold. That Watcher of hers, Hull, had barely paid attention to her while he rushed her to the seashore and saw her started on her shellfish gathering that morning. He was too distracted and in a hurry to get back to something or other he’d been involved with since well before even the pre-dawn hours those on punishment duty like her were forced to get up at. She’d heard a few scattered words about bringing something out of storage. Not that she’d gotten the chance to think about that much once the water-breathing spell was cast on her and she was underwater.

The bizarre, monstrous fish that tried to eat her face certainly didn’t encourage distractions. She’d thought they were just a story made up by the monks and dismissed the other shellfish gatherers as spiteful liars when they talked about sighting them, but apparently not. If not for that suspiciously stocky mage splitting the sea around her and summoning the ugly things away, her morning would have been even more unpleasant than usual. The pre-dawn darkness didn’t let her catch a clear glimpse of him, especially from where he floated up high, but at least he apologised for the near-maiming and called her by the proper appellation when he soared off. She’d kept the skeleton of the otherwise disintegrated fish, seeing as the mage was kind enough to leave it behind before releasing the water and leaving. Well, once he’d drained whatever had mutated it and caused its flesh to disintegrate at any rate. She also wouldn’t be dismissing the wild stories of her fellow indentured servants so easily in the future, that was for certain.

The thought made her clench her fists, and not just because of the cold. To think that she would be treated like this, reduced to this because some fool couldn’t refrain from inciting her ire. Oh how she wished she could call down the wrath of Tempus on them all. She was this close to-

“There you are!”

She barely caught herself before she acted on her prior thought. She didn’t prevent herself form glaring though.

Not that her minder seemed to notice or care. “That’s enough shellfish gathering for now.”

She almost dumped the basket in the sand. The only reason she didn’t was because she was surprised at the pronouncement. Usually she’d be at it all the way up to breakfast before he came to fetch her, but dawn hadn’t even broken yet entirely.

“Come on,” Hull ordered, motioning for her to hurry up. “Load them up and let’s go!”

Deciding that asking questions or otherwise commenting wasn’t likely to accomplish anything more than it had on prior occasions, she just did as told and followed after him. The path back to the keep was largely unchanged from her unfortunate routine, but it concluded with neither a shower nor breakfast, which soured her mood even more than her general situation had, which was saying something. At least she was given a dry robe to throw over herself.

It was only when she realized where they were going that she couldn’t keep her silence anymore. “The Tower of Exaltation?”

Hull just grunted.

Few outside the Avowed of Candlekeep were allowed in there, the exceptions being well-trusted associates and people who were allowed to come in on flying mounts. Though even they usually had to settle for external pathways and stairs when going up or down. The tower consisted of level upon level of empty rooms where spellcasting and alchemical experimentations were carried out, and aerial steeds could be stabled and arrive and depart through large wall-ports. The tower was also connected by flying bridges to many other towers of Candlekeep, some of them covered but most open to the elements. Other pilgrims talked about the tower being the place where the most senior ruling monks resided. The fact that visitors and pilgrims that did come by flying steed had to use the exterior stairway or a flying bridge to get up and down from the tower supported that assumption. That she herself had been denied the chance to use one of the labs inside until her supervisor monk deemed it worthwhile – a chance she may well have lost due to the debacle that landed her and that insufferable elf into temporary indentured servitude – further supported her deductions. She hadn’t even been allowed on the ground floor, let alone higher up or in the basement below.

The basement Hull was leading her into right now.

“Where are we going?” she asked warily, though she managed to keep it out of her voice.

“To get some things out of storage,” Hull rather unhelpfully answered as he led her into the subterranean storage room two levels below ground. “Come now, double up.”

“Why do I feel like the fly about to land on the spider’s web?” She was experiencing a no small amount of concern. Considering that just over an hour prior she’d nearly had her face eaten by a heretofore unknown fish with several dozen razor-sharp teeth, each up to two inches in length, she felt justified in worrying about her safety. Tempus’ clerics hadn’t prepared her for this, neither before nor after they anointed her. “I thought only Avowed were allowed in here.”

“Yes, well, they didn’t do anything to deserve this.”

“What!?”

Hull stopped at the foot of the stairwell and faced her, turning from impatient to thoughtful. “Hmm. I suppose even _you_ haven’t done anything to deserve this.” Then he shrugged. “Alas, we’re in too deep to go back now.”

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“Don’t worry, as long as you follow all the rules you should be relatively safe.”

“Rules?” Rules for what?

“Yep. We’re talking about very particular cargo here. There are rules if we’re going to get everything upstairs safely. Now let’s see, there ought to be an instruction sheet around here somewhere…” Hull walked around the packed cellar until he identified which of the many sheets of paper scattered about was the one he wanted.

The priestess looked around and tried to figure out why the space they’d entered felt off, up until she realized that there were no books on display anywhere. Before she had time to contemplate that anomaly, however, she was handed a sheet of paper to read through.

“Rules… for… not committing ignoble suicide?” She read in disbelief once the man finally presented her with a sheet of paper he’d torn off one of the many cast-iron, heavily locked and chained-shut chests, crates and boxes in that cellar. “Rule number 1: Thou shalt not open the box. Rule Number 2: Seriously, don’t open the box. What?” Her disbelief wouldn’t accept staying unheard as she read. When Hull only motioned impatiently for her to read the rest, she had no choice but to continue. “Rule number 3: If thou couldns’t help thyself and opened the box, thou shalt close the box. Rule number 4: Seriously, close it.” She almost dropped the paper and was about to toss her head back in exasperation if not for the raised eyebrow of her Watcher.

The seriousness in his look stopped her short and made her lift the paper to her eyes again, begrudgingly. At least there was sufficient magelight to read by. “Rule number 5: If thou wert sufficiently intellectually-challenged to ignore the first four rules, or if thou somehow damaged the locking mechanism, shalt thou skip to Rule 23. If thou art being coerced by other individuals or creatures into appropriating or handling the contents of this chest, shalt thou proceed with reading rules 6-22 aloud or through whatever means of communication said individuals or creatures utilise in order to exert the aforementioned coercion.”

“Right, so we’ll be skipping obviously.”

The priestess of Tempus glared at the man but Hull was busy moving chests about and wasn’t looking at her, so her rightfully expressed loathing was wasted. She grudgingly flipped the sheet over, though not before skimming the front page and seeing that rules 6-22 were essentially advice (for a given meaning of the word) worded to suit the mentalities of said third parties according to various character and creature types. “Rule 23: If thou and/or other relevant parties insist on opening this box in spite of rules 1-22, thou shalt be sure not to handle any of the items without first equipping the specially-designed, Oghma-blessed pair of gloves included with the contents of this chest. See Rule 25 for equipping prerequisites.” By now she felt like her eyebrows were about to jump off her face and take refuge at the back of her head. “Rule 24: Thou shalt not assume rule 23 to be a trick or trap or anything of the sort, and instead take it at face value. Rule 25: If thou be determined to proceed with this ill-advised course of action in spite of rules 1-24, thou shalt ensure thou art as full of life as possible before exposing thyself to the risk of having said life drained and eaten by the horrifically cursed items making up the contents of this chest. Therefore, thou shalt immediately return yon container to its original spot and go back home to feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast porridge and fruit bats and large chu—IS THIS SOME KIND OF JOKE!?”

Hull stacked his third chest on top of the prior pair and stopped to frown at her. “Actually, the one who ultimately envisioned these safety measures had absolutely no sense of humour to speak of if you can believe it.”

The priestess stood there and just stared at the unruffled Watcher in complete disbelief.

“… Okay, so the one who _actually_ put word to the spirit of the rules had more than enough sense of humour for the both of them. It’s not really important. Anyway!” Hull snatched the paper sheet from her and shoved a small tray into her arms instead, one that supported a different sheet of paper on top of a pair of leather gloves the colour of faded parchment.

Biting back a sneer at the man who immediately went back to bringing small chests out from the deepest recesses of that basement room, the woman placed her new burden on the crate to her right and set the new sheet aside. That way she could read it while loosening the straps on the gloves in preparation of putting them on. She also risked a hope that the newest note would make more sense than the first. Her hopes betrayed her, much as she expected. “First shalt thou pull on the holy gloves. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.” The woman rolled her eyes, already pulling on the first glove. “Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, pick up thou just one of the horrifically cursed objects in this blessed casket, that it may start to drain the rising charge in the gloves with its most unholy enchantment. Then, shalt thou take care to never again drop said unholy object for more time than needed to count an extra two, lest the count reach five. At which point, provided thou hath not yet recited Oghma’s holy sacraments instead of counting to three upon donning them, shalt the gloves proceed to horrifically mangle thy precious appendages-GAH!” The priestess violently wrenched the one glove off her hand and dropped it like it was on fire. It took less than a second, and she hadn’t even picked up the second part of the pair, but the fright and sudden adrenaline spike already had her gasping.

There was a sound suspiciously similar to a snickered behind her.

Anger flared and she was whirling around with a curse on her lips before she could think twice about it and- “Ooof!” she stumbled back under the unexpected weight of the chest that the undaunted Watcher shoved into her arms. Then a second chest was placed on top of it. Then a third blocked her view of him completely.

“That should do for the first load,” the man said cheerfully, picking up one or more chests of his own by the sounds of it. “Let’s go!” And he proceeded to climb up the stairs.

Standing there, the woman felt like a vein was about to burst and was sorely tempted to dump everything and forget about the reason she had come to the library fortress in the first place. To just drop everything she was holding, go to her assigned room, collect her things and leave Candlekeep. Just go.

But then she remembered that anything of that sort would just see her back to gathering shellfish, since her sentence wasn’t yet over, so she bit her tongue and stomped up the stairs after the insufferable monk, her glare never leaving her chest-obstructed face.

At least the next hour wasn’t full of any more unpleasant surprises. She didn’t trip, she wasn’t insulted or mocked (further), she didn’t get attacked by airborne analogues of the monster fish, she wasn’t even bumped into by the other people doing the same thing she and Hull were, going up and down those same, long stairs. Not that there weren’t surprises at all, as she did get to put a face to the mage who’d saved her from having her face eaten earlier, and she hadn’t connected him to a dwarf of all things. Despite having seen him arrive by air, it didn’t even occur to her than the man who’d taken care of those monstrous fish and the dwarf being mourned the prior evening were one and the same. Dwarves were notorious for distrusting the arcane, as well as being prone to miscasts and outright spell failure when trying to cast anything to begin with. It was why even their priestly spells needed to be channelled through a symbol instead of their bodies, at least as far as she knew. In any event, she would have expressed her thanks again but there hadn’t been much time given that she and Hull weren’t the only ones bringing in chests of whatever those things were.

That the gatewarden, Sir Thearabho of Crimmor, was in that particular laboratory was also a factor: due to the peculiarity of her case, the once famed inquisitor repeatedly assisted with her research for the first two days of her stay, proving to be as wise and intelligent as he was skilled in battle. He’d even been present when the First Reader himself took an interest in her situation and attempted to divine whatever curse she was under (to no success, sadly). Unfortunately, the incident that changed her remaining time in Candlekeep from research to indentured servitude also saw the tall knight’s expression going from pensive to irritated and disapproving. If there was anything that could sour her mood more than being relegated to servanthood because of a fool who couldn’t keep his questions to himself, it was being subjected to unfriendly, disappointed and mistrustful treatment by a man she admired. She only hoped the knight didn’t start thinking she was deluded about her problem, like everyone else had come to think, including her peers in the clergy.

It was near breakfast time, just after the sun broke over the horizon, that the blessed monotony was shattered.

“Outta’ the way!”

She was not oblivious enough to her surroundings to jump or stumble, which was a good thing since she was climbing the long inner staircase of the tower when she heard it.

“The hell?” Hull blurted from up ahead.

“Outta’ the way longshanks! Dwarf comin’ through!”

“Oof!” She grunted, avoiding a fall only because her shoulder met the wall when she got roughly shoved aside by whoever it was.

Hull yelped at being knocked aside as well and fared no better than her when he got shoved against the wall back-first. The dwarf who did that didn’t care, simply huffing up the stairs as fast as he could. “Reevor!” So _that_ was the name! “What in the Abyss do you think you’re doing!?” Hull’s vocal intensity was fairly low even then, to the point that it barely qualified as a shout, but for Candlekeep it was positively uproarious. “This is sensitive cargo you know!” The Watcher resumed his climb at double pace.

And here she thought Candlekeep monks were supposed to be all calm and unobtrusive. But she didn’t say that out loud. Instead she matched his pace, helped by the fact that she was only carrying one chest this time, it being the last load meant to be taken up.

Unfortunately, they didn’t catch up with whoever this Reevor was, despite their advantage in pace reach. Perhaps it was because the stairs largely nullified their natural speed advantage, or the dwarf was just that in a rush, but they were still two floors down when Reevor barrelled into the laboratory they’d been ferrying chests to.

“That weird dream last night better not have been a prank if it was real because if it is I swear to _Moradin_ I-”

“Reevor, _stop!_ ”

She barely had a moment to recognise the uncharacteristically panicked voice as that of Sir Thearabho before the world wavered sideways, some terrible feeling washing through the space she occupied and making her head taste like the black shades of frost at night. A loud crash echoed from the lab, drawing a curse from Hull’s mouth, then a whole string of swearwords when a flash of unlight surged from beyond the doors ahead and up. Whatever and whoever else was inside gave startled and pained yelps, grunts and gasps of pain, then – CRASH! – a loud noise drowned out everything for an instant. Something must have fallen from somewhere somewhen, somehow or not, collapsed and struck mightily against the hard stone floor, and there was a momentary haze of _nothing_ that made her feel faint and the contents of her last, lone chest clatter and seethe like burning acid, black smoke bursting through what should have been a lid spelled airtight. She almost dropped the whole thing, but the noise of even greater racket from the lab ahead and above made her jerk aside and smash into the wall – no, not the racket. It was the steak knife that embedded right next to her ear, dull-looking and jagged, giving a rattling hum as it shook sideways from the lingering shock of embedding into the densest stone.

The priestess gulped. First that monstrous fish thing and now she’d almost taken a knife to the eye.

Then a noise, louder than all those before – BANG! – cut through the air, uniform and thick, like stone on stone, pierced through the noises of… of… were they _fighting_ in there?!

Suddenly, the man running ahead of her came to a halt with a gasp, eyes locked on the door.

No, not the door.

A black, shimmer-less ball roughly the size of a human head rolled out of the room, leaving a perfectly round groove in the several inches-high threshold that should have stopped it, not losing even a shred of momentum. The dark brown wood turned into dust coloured a sickly, blackish-green as the globe rolled through it and inexorably advanced towards the edge of the stairway. Despite the fact that the surface was built minutely tilted the _opposite way_ , so as to prevent exactly this sort of outcome.

“Fuck!” Hull swore, eyes wide in horror. “Hold this!” He almost threw his chest on top of hers, and before she could do more than grunt, he pulled a pair of familiar gloves out of an inside pocket of his work robes. “We need not seek Thy House of Knowledge, To bring the long sought Teachings down;” incredibly quickly, he pulled both gloves on. “They art to all already given, Thou dost e’en now Thy Wisdom fount: To every Seeker’s soul appear, That all may see Thy Wisdom clear!” The gloves flared and turned from faded brown to pearly white the moment the finished the chant.

It took less than three seconds, but that was more than enough for the sphere to reach the edge, cream wooden balusters rotting around the undaunted thing, black and eerie…

It hurt her mind to look at it.

Hull was already running, desperately trying to reach it before it slipped off the ledge, but it was clear he wouldn’t be fast enough, even if he did manage to rip his over-robe off completely, which he only managed after the black ball finally slipped over the edge-

Hull turned ninety degrees, stopped his sprinting climb with a foot against the wall and, sweeping his ruined robes into a loose bunch in front of him, hopped on and over the railing, finally leaping off the stairs entirely.

The Priestess gaped. It was like the world halted just so she could see him, unsupported, doomed to fall several stories down through the gap at the middle of the spiral stairwell.

Then the man collided mid-leap with the unholy ball “Unh!” And lost whatever control he had over his airborne trajectory. It didn’t _quite_ prevent him from covering the rest of the distance to the other, lower side of the spiral staircase, but that only meant he got to crash into and break the baluster on that side instead of directly smashing _only_ into the stairs. Broken stair sticks and wood chips spread everywhere under his bulk. “Ooooh…” Though he managed to hug the robe-shrouded black ball to himself, the man still groaned in pain, barely managing not to fall back off or roll down the stairs the long way. “Oooh…. O-Oghma…” Well, if he could curse by his God’s name, he probably wasn’t too – “The b-bearer of Th-Thy blessing thus entreats,” what? “F-for sanctification of garb and veil,” his voice seemed to be recovering with every new word, each allowing him to wrap the now smoking robe over the ball he’d grabbed from the air, “For the strengthening of Thy holy handguards, For Thy Blessing of Protection to upswell!” The smoke seemed to lessen as the once green robe, now darkened to brown and even black in places, begun to lose color. “SThat the Curse of the Abyss might not prevail against your faithful, That Thou deliver us from every plague and from the unlife caused by that which spawns iniquity, And from all fell influences that arise and attack, fuelled as I declare by the willing consummation of my life!” The chant seemed to pull something from the man, leaving him pale and shaking, but the robes turned as white as his gloves now were.

The sounds of his heavy breathing almost eclipsed the continued noises of fighting men and destroyed furniture from above.

“Are… Are you alright?” Probably a dumb question, but what else could she say?

“Cofusticate and bebother that bloody, moronic, dumbass, drunkard of a dwarf!” Hull cursed, staggering to his feet and doing his best to half-run, half-hobble up the stairs. A final, rattling crash was heard from the lab just on queue, not quite drowning out the roars and grunts of battle, let alone the bright and distinct, sheering flare of magic being cast inside. “Shit!” The Watcher managed to push aside most of the pain and weariness and run up the stairs, stopping only to pull the knife – as black and corrosive as the ball had been – out from the wall near her ear. The degeneration of the wall stopped immediately, but a gnarly mark was left behind, like the stone itself had been eaten and debased by a horde of jittering clarion.

“Wh-what _was_ that?” The woman breathed, then she looked at the two chests she was holding. “What _are_ these things?”

“Leftovers,” Hull growled while he wrapped the knife in the top folds of his improvised holy shroud.

“Leftovers!?” She could not contain her disbelief. “Of _what?_ ”

“The most murderous bastard that ever died.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Some beast? Monster? An evil warlock? A dark ritualist? A serial murderer? “Who are you talking about?” And who could it have been that it ranked higher than the evil people still alive in the world? Well, for a given meaning of the word in case of Manshoon, or Larloch and other liches like him.

Whatever the Watcher would have said next was derailed by the sight of someone stumbling out of the lab.

She recognized him almost as soon as the Watcher did, though not by name.

“Theodon! What the devil’s going on in-” – CRASH! – “Crap!!” Hull ran up past her, and in looking to the door again she spotted the singed and mind-addled-looking form of the one other person who’d been ferrying things up to that place for the past hour. The man blinked dazedly and slid down the wall on the far side of the door, somehow not cursed with… whatever that black phenomenon had been. Was.

To her surprise, Hull didn’t stop to check on him, instead rushing into the room at full speed.

Gulping with her suddenly dry throat, the priestess hurried after Hull, somehow failing to catch up to him despite the man’s injured and life-leeched state. It proved to be a good thing, as it meant she entered the room last, so no one knocked into her when she suddenly came to a halt, shocked and unable to process exactly what she was seeing.

The long table was almost entirely intact, for a given meaning of the word. It was upended despite it being nailed to the floor, one of its solid, steel-cast legs outright broken and the other three bent at odd angles. All of the objects previously arrayed on it had been scattered all across the floor. A chest lay upended and cracked to the side, spilling yet more miscellanea that seemed to drink in all life and reason along with the light. Here and there a knife, fork, gem, trinket or other, unidentified items stuck out of the floor and walls, there was even a knitting pin buried with its tip in the ceiling five meters up. All of them seemed to have _infected_ the black granite the structure was made of, or were still in the process of doing such. All things that would have alarmed any mage or cleric.

All things that she almost entirely failed to register due to the other things making up the disaster that the laboratory had turned into. Hull standing frozen next to where he’d hastily deposited his burden was not among those all-important factors.

One was the sight of the dwarf, Reevor, staring in unmoving, open-mouthed shock from where he’d fallen on his rear in the scrying pool some distance to the left of the doorway, on the opposite side of the long table previously covered in unholy things. He was completely drenched, water dripping from his hair over his face and through his beard, his linen tunic and woollen pants looking several shades darker than usual, so soaked they were. All clear consequences of having been hurled by someone else into that pool, and very recently considering how violently the pool still sloshed around him. The water didn’t even reach his waist, more than half of it having splashed out and across the floor, and if there had been any chance of it flowing back, it had been eliminated the moment the forcefield appeared to trap the dwarf inside. Or perhaps it was there to protect _him_ , considering the devastation that had been wreaked on that place, with parts of the floor and walls corroded or rotted. Only a layer of dust and ash was left from what had been, until just minutes earlier, a fairly tasteful Calishite rug. Quite a few of what looked like kitchen utensils – was that a rolling pin? – lay around the transparent dome as if they’d bounced off it, which would have accounted for some of the noises heard running up the stairs. But even that paled in importance compared to the scraps of cloth littering the floor of the room in front of her, straps and pieces of tan, brown and green cloth. Cloth that once used to be part of the same green robe. And a tan cotton shirt. And a pair of brown linen trousers and...

The only thing that seemed to have survived in fewer than a dozen pieces was hanging from the corner of an upended rack, the torn and discarded smallclothes of… of…

“Hrrngh-ngh-nh-rrah!”

The woman stared, wide-eyed, at the prone form of Candlekeep’s Gatewarden, Sir Thearabho of Crimmor. Sir Thearabho of Crimmor who was writhing face-down on the floor, gasping and snarling as he struggled and barely failed to free his left arm from where it was twisted behind his back. The other arm –some small object gripped tight within – was held away from his body by the wrist. He bucked like a bull, muscles bulged in exertion and his whole body glistened with sweat in the sunlight shining in from the window in the west wall. The man was everything she’d envisioned, tall, broad-shouldered, vigorously muscular and garbed in one boot and the scraps of one pant leg and nothing else-

She swallowed dryly, and despite that everyone in that room was facing away from her, she still thanked Tempus that her robe concealed the reaction of the lower parts of this body she so despised, though that gratitude lasted less than a moment. No sooner had she laid eyes on that sight that she felt like she’d be ripped to pieces by the conflicting emotions the scene engendered in her, everything from envy and disbelief to utter outrage at the man she admired being despoiled and wrist-locked from behind by some dwarf whose stumpy thighs were clenched around his naked bu-

Her thoughts were cut off by the thump of Hull’s hallowed burden falling on his left foot.

“EYEOW!” The man howled and started hopping around, clutching at his appendage. “Argggh, merde, mother of fuck, fucking himmeldonnerwetter malaka, gay kocken offen yom-”

The woman gaped as she beheld the Watcher proceeded to swear a bluestreak in at least five different languages, hopping on one foot all the while.

“Na mou klaseis ta’rxidia, Ullu Ka Patta, Siug aan my aambeie en wag vir beter dae!” the man snarled, grunting as he cradled his foot, then finally seemed to find a suitable closing passage to his blue streak. “… Teonen al tmuna shel kalba! Hrrrnngh! Ooooh… Gods-damned ball…” He finally stopped hopping, resting heavily against the half-upturned table, white-faced and cringing from the pain as he rubbed at his sandaled appendage. “I swear, when next I see that girl, so help me Deneir I’m gonna-”

The room flared white for a moment, silencing the Watcher and drawing both his and her attention back to the… pair. She would have glared at the back of the dwarf’s head some more if not for the strands of strange, off-white light that flowed through and around his arm, concentrated in his hand which had moved to grip Thearabho’s own, and the… small object it gripped inside. It was a small thing that almost looked like a spoon, if not for the row of tines carved into its tip. The bizarre object was coloured a green-tinged black that was rapidly clearing, steadily turning lighter and whiter, as if drained by whatever magic the dwarf was using.

“Nnnnh…oogh...!” The knight’s struggles slowed and his hoarse grunts settled second by second. “Hnnn...”

The sight only served to make the woman gulp and feel stiff and hot in… places. It was fortunate she was wearing a robe and was farthest behind so that no one saw her blush.

The unknown utensil – kitchen implement? – finally turned back to what was supposedly its normal sheen of simple brass, and the last of the blackness burst out of it in flecks of smoke-like dust, which the dwarf pulled into his hand through his skin along with whatever emanations that white gossamer had been.

Only for the same light flare once more, not off-white this time, as the dwarf released the knight’s wrist – the arm fell to the floor, strenghtless – and start to rub the prone man’s back, concentrated positive energy pouring into him from behind through his skin. The Priestess could feel it from all the way on the other side of the large chamber.

“A-aaahhh…” If she hadn’t been there to hear it happen, she’d never have imagined what the honourable Sir Thearabho of Crimmor sounded like when he… he _moaned._

Oh Tempus...

To the side, Hull’s mouth had fallen open at the sound. At the sight of the man squirming under…

Mentally, she was able to guess at what business the dwarf was maybe, _possibly_ truly seeing to, but that did not change what the scene looked like. It was only with great difficulty that the Priestess didn’t fidget from the rising… heat. She forced herself to look at anything that wasn’t the sight of two large, sweaty, muscular men in the midst of their (unplanned?) match of naked wrestling, or whatever it was that had happened. Was happening.

With some of her mental capacity finally free, she could at last take in the many details that she had missed in her shock up to that point. Besides the upended table and multitude of scattered objects all over the floor, there were gouges and scratches across the floor and along the walls. They were a noxious shade of black and green and  the miasma of ill will and negative energy felt oily and corrosive now that she was looking right at them, same for the whispers and flecks of smokemist from curses as they flowed upwards, each one a different shade than the last. She hadn’t noticed the difference before because the whole laboratory practically seethed with unholy feeling, beguiling the mind and ensnaring the senses to the point where she had to focus everything she could in order to notice differences in flavour between the various objects, and their effects on the floor and walls. The air smelled faintly rotten and even the water on the floor was growing murkier and more viscous around the few dark items it sloshed around, only to then turn to noxious vapours. It would have been the most alarming part of the whole picture, if not for the scraps and rips of clothing that the Gatewarden had worn, each rotting, disintegrating or alternatively sublimating after he’d torn them or had them torn off his body for whatever cause. They lay strewed all over the place, the underthings hanging off the corner of the half-upended table standing out most starkly, and the colours – tan and green with strips of white – were rapidly fading or blackening as the various scraps seemingly ate themselves from the edge inwards, surrounded by nigh-invisible flames of necrotic unlight. The only thing missing were sizzling and susurrating noises, or any noises at all that weren’t grunts of exertion, but now that the struggles of the two men were finally ceasing, the area was almost totally silent.

Somehow, it made everything feel even more unnerving than if there had been the appropriate sounds and sacrilegious wails somehow echoing through the room’s air.

She gulped.

“Ohhh…” Thearabho of Crimmor finally slumped entirely under the dwarf. “Wh… what happened…?” He looked about dazedly for a few moments before his head must have finally cleared. Then he instantly stiffened, going about as rigid as a carved rock, and his voice went from dazed to a tight, low hiss. “There had better be a very, _very_ good explanation for this!”

Surprisingly, the dwarf didn’t speak. Instead, he tapped the back of the man’s free hand while continuing the healing backrub with the other one.

With a groan, the knight turned his head in the indicated direction and stared at the item in his grasp for long moments. Item which he tossed with a short but sharp cry as if it burned his hand. “Fuck me!”

Oh, Tempus blast him, the man had no idea what he was doing to her with every new word and sound that came out of his mouth.

Her thoughts were thankfully cut when the dwarf finally spoke. “I shall behave on the assumption that you do not mean that literally.”

Therabho flinched violently and his whole body lost pallor, seemingly draining from breathy red to a sickly gray from one second to the next. “C-Cyrus!?” He squeaked. She wasn’t sure he’d actually done it for a moment but he really had. The grey-haired, scarred, burly Thearabho had just squeaked like a blushing maiden.

The gatewarden let his forehead drop to the floor with a thump and groaned in despair.

The dwarf seemed to decide it was safe enough to let the man free, so he climbed off him and stepped aside to let him rise, his hand only lingering on the human’s skin for one more moment, leaving behind a shimmer of white healing light. She supposed she should not be surprised that someone who’d just committed such a lewd assault would want to keep things on his terms up to the very end.

Not that her primary thoughts were concerned with that.

The woman shifted on her feet, resisting the urge to rub her thighs together, but otherwise did not even try to look away from the full, unobstructed view of the man’s rear as he pulled his knees under him and pushed himself of the floor. Even when he winced and rubbed his front side – injuries? there _were_ bloodstains on the floor where he used to lay, some of them borderline black and smoking like the cursed cloth and stone all around them – her eyes still drunk all they could of the sight she’d never thought she’d see, despite any, small hope to the contrary. After all, the essence of wisdom lay in taking advantage of any and all opportunities as they came.

Finally, he man was back on his feet. “Reevor!”

Said dwarf flinched, splashing about the pool he was in, and stumbled to his feet. “H-here…’m here and Ah… ah dinnae mean t-”

“I’m only going to say this once…” Thearabho said flatly, without turning to face them. “If you’re not gone by the time I turn around, you’ll be cleaning up compost chambers by day and sleeping with the pigs by night for the next six months!”

“I’d rather no one leave until I’ve had time to handle all the lingering effects of the curses.” the other dwarf interrupted as if nothing untoward had ever happened.

“Well isn’t that just bloody convenient!” the naked man grunted, rubbing at his forehead and finally turning around, giving her that full view of his front that she’d secretly coveted since first laying eyes upon him, all those days ago. Even the wounds on him only enhanced the view, angry-red rips and gashes in his skin. Half a dozen cuts in sets of four went up and down his torso or around his sides, some reaching ever lower, going all the way past the waist and hips, one ending half-way down his right thigh. She had to force herself not to lick her lips. He was even more robust and well-endowed than she’d imagined. And naturally, his rich voice and the way his chest moved only enhanced her opinions. “I don’t suppose this day could get any worse?” he grunted, finally dropping his hand from his brow and opening his eyes.

Which was when he laid eyes on the part of the audience he didn’t know was present. That was to say, he saw Hull and, more importantly, her.

Absurdly, the woman wondered if the man was going to start covering himself, try to get out of sight as quickly as possible, perhaps flail about in a panic-

Sir Thearabho sighed instead, reminding her yet again that no one but her and her parents knew to treat her like the lady she was. Far from being appropriately flustered, the man just stood there as if she wasn’t a woman at all, not at all body-shy. “Oh look,” the knight spoke flatly, accepting the trousers that had just been conjured for him. “It got worse.” He finally looked at the younger dwarf-

And gasped in horror, dropping the garment and reeling back with the most stricken look she had seen on anyone in her entire life.

“What?” Hull demanded, suddenly uncaring of the flaring pains in his swollen foot and stumbling towards the two as quickly as he could, “why are you all of a sudden-?” only to choke on his words when he pulled the dwarf – this Cyrus – around by the shoulder and got a good look at his face.

Or, rather, the large mess of flesh, blood and thick, vitreous humours that leeched out of his left eye socket, ruined and seeping blackish fluids amidst everything else. The dwarf quickly covered the mess with his left palm again, but everyone had already seen it and the veins around his socket, swollen and black beyond what he could hide, looking like a mess of threads sewn through his skin.

The commotion snapped Sir Thearabho out of his shock. The older man made an aborted attempt to reach for the dwarf with both hands only to stop short and clench his fists. They hovered, white-knuckled, just shy of the dwarf’s shoulders as if he feared he’d break him if he touched him, face bleak with dismay as he held himself back. A shudder rocked his whole frame soon after, then the man was moving, rushing towards the closest bookcase whose protective forcefield died at a muttered word. Not pausing a step, he then struck the binding of a hardcover volume none too gently, making it flash once. “Tethtoril! Tethtoril, answer me right now!”

“Yes?” The First Reader’s voice was calm but minced no words. “I am here, what-?”

“You’re needed in Gorion’s laboratory right now!”

“What has happened? Did one of the seekers or acolytes fall afoul of the curses in-”

“A reckless oaf with more booze in his head than sense barrelled into the place and then I grabbed that bloody spork and _gouged the little one’s eye out!_ ”

The what?

“I shall be there in moments.”

 “-. .-“

“Theodon had just entered the room with one of the last coffers when Reevor barrelled through the door. Their collision sent Theodon crashing chest-first into the table, which sent the items already arrayed there scattering outwards.”

“(Didn’t have the courtesy to kiss me or even state his intentions before shoving himself into my rump)” the human in question muttered to himself from where he was warily gathering up the scattered cursed objects alongside her. The monk had been checked over by Sir Thearabho and ordered back to work as soon as the First Reader arrived.

“The Gatewarden’s reflexes worked against him, causing him to scramble for the dislodged items before he could think twice. This resulted in direct skin contact with the Spork of Flaying.” Wh… What? He _had_ to be joking. Was she supposed to believe all… this was caused by something with such an inane name? “I was unable to intervene immediately due to the distance between him and myself, as well as the fact that Theodon was between the two of us. The situation was compounded when the items tossed into disarray began to wildcast due to their inherent sympathetic resonance. Theodon’s coffer also cracked open, further compounding the situation. This enabled the Sphere of Spoilage to fall off its special stand and roll towards the edge of the table while its curse of decay went into active state.” Sphere of Spoilage? “Seeing it about to make contact with Theodon, I used telekinesis to toss him to the far side of the room.”

“(My sore bum doesn’t warrant even a passing mention, I see.)”

“This had the unfortunate effect of knocking Reevor prone. It left him between Thearabho and myself, and in the middle of a disorderly melange of rapidly destabilising cursed objects. From experience I knew that water serves to make it difficult for curses to propagate due to the incompatibility between its fluid, transitory nature and the structured, highly specific nature of my failed enchantments, even un-discriminative as they are.” Did he just say these were all _failed_ enchantments? _His_ failed enchantments? “My decision was clear, particularly when I noticed that the item closest to him was the Back-Breaking Spatula.” Who _named_ these things? “I therefore leapt to where Reevor lay and tossed him over the table and into the scrying pool.”

“(By the ass-end of his breeches no less. Must be some inborn dwarven promiscuity at work.)”

“I cast an Emergency Force Sphere over the pool immediately after, as extra insurance against the increasingly unstable mystical charges of the various objects scattered about, which set off a chain reaction moments after.” Which was putting it mildly, considering that the things in her strongbox somehow reacted to that even from all the way down the stairwell. “Unfortunately, all the aforementioned took precious seconds, time during which Thearabho used the Spork of Flaying to excoriate almost the entirety of his top layers.” By Tempus’ Shield! _That_ was what happened? He didn’t just attack the dwarf in a mindless rage and … got his modesty outraged in retaliation? “The non-discriminatory nature of the cursed enchantment meant that the object could not tell clothing and skin apart. This had the fortunate effect of keeping his injuries limited to a handful of lacerations that were merely incidental. Unfortunately, this still left the Gatewarden almost entirely bare of clothing and therefore on the verge of beginning to flay himself of his actual skin.”

“(And what a storied, rugged skin it is.)”

Damn it, would it kill the man to stop giving words to her thoughts?

“Due to the scattered cursed objects in the process of wildcasting and which I knew to cause ill effects at a mere touch, I judged it ill-advised to attempt the wresting of the implement from his hands while still in that spot, yet it was also clear I had to do something before action or circumstance could cause one or both of us to collapse on top of the murderous miscellany.” She had to contain a snort at the term. “I therefore clutched him around the waist and flew the both of us across the room.”

“(Bloody little opportunist.)”

“Unfortunately, my skill at grappling is not on par with my skill at arms so I was unable to immobilise him properly. The Gatewarden’s arms were still free, which allowed him to retaliate. Recognising me as a credible threat to the possibility of continuing on with such, Thearabho stopped trying to skin himself and used the Spork of Flaying to gouge my left eye out.”

“…”

The lack of comments echoed the way her exasperation and amusement suddenly drained out completely, leaving her face in a sour grimace as she carefully helped gather up the scattered objects. Her superior officer at the Temple of Tempus was right. It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

“The surprise and pain caused sufficient distraction for my hold to loosen the moment we crashed down. A last, violent discharge of miasma from all cursed objects in this laboratory followed immediately after. This allowed the Gatewarden to dislodge me and throw me as far away as he could, which was a considerable distance and with appreciable force given the strength-enhancing effects of the active enchantment. The broken state of the table prior to my repairing it upon your arrival was the result of my collision with it.” As well as severe bruising and possibly bone fractures and internal bleeding from the impact alone, she bet. She didn’t need to look at Sir Thearabho’s face to assume it, though she did. Standing behind the table, well away from the others, he looked grim and his fists were closed tight as he watched the two. “Fortunately, as the Spork of Flaying reasserted its purpose, distraction settled on the Gatewarden once more, allowing me to blindside him and successfully force him into a submission hold. I was unable to wrest the Spork away, but my secondary plan to reabsorb the empyreal infusion eventually worked as intended, undoing the curse at its root and finally allowing Thearabho’s mind to reassert itself. Once he let go of the item, I released him, at which point he noticed our present company, saw my injury, panicked and hastened to call you before I had the chance to attend to it myself or even inform him I could.”

“(No, you just used the minute or so before the First Reader got here to conjure Thearabho a set of perfectly-fitting pants and shirt, just to drive home that you’ve got _first-hand_ knowledge of his exact measurements, unlike _other_ people in this room.)”

Clearly, Candlekeep had much going on under the surface, though she couldn’t truly deny feeling a certain sympathy in this particular case.

“(And don’t think I didn’t notice you ‘forgetting’ to make his mighty muscle-boundedness new underwear, you lucky little bastard.)”

It seemed that Candlekeep’s _higher_ echelons were not the only ones that tended to take liberties. The woman almost gave into the impulse to nudge the man and shut him up, but the both of them were on thin ice as it was. Better to let the dwarf, Reevor, continue to suffer the full weight of Sir Thearabho’s stormy glower instead.

“There you are, young one.” The First Reader withdrew his hand from the rapidly fading afterimage of a shadowy harp. Though there was still blood around it, the dwarf’s eye was completely healed and there was no trace of a curse anymore. “Though I dare say you already had it well in hand. Unlike _myself_ for the first few moments there.” The priest gave the dwarf a piercing look then, for some reason she couldn’t name.

The dwarf’s response was to create and hold out a small sheet of paper for him to read.

Then he rose from the chair he’d been seated on, wiped his face clean of blood and walked to Hull – the monk was sitting on the floor, back against the table, still weak after the sacrificial benediction of earlier – and healed his foot, much to his surprise.

That done, Cyrus Anwar walked around the table to where Thearabho was now crossly watching Reevor assist with the tidying up.

The old knight tensed and faced the younger dwarf, back taut in spite of his obvious relief at the healed eye. “Good,” he said, no entirely masking the tenseness in his voice. “You’re fine then.”

“Yes,” he nodded. “May I ensure you are as well?”

“Definitely Gorion’s son,” the knight said wryly, still looking uncomfortable. “Do whatever you need to, lad.”

The woman chose to retrieve the remaining cursed objects in such a way as to let her watch the ongoing events. For all that she preferred the image of the great, self-assured knight, seeing Sir Thearabho off-kilter and behaving so, dare she say it, _biddable_ , had much of its own charm. Her dreams would certainly benefit from everything she’d already beholden, she was sure.

Cyrus held out a hand to just in front of the older man’s face and it… did not _exactly_ glow, but her quiet cantrip used for reading all sorts of magic did reveal certain energy shifts in the man’s body as the dwarf’s hand slowly drifted down. Faint lines of off-colour light flickered and faded through his clothes, she thought, where the lacerations had been prior to the dwarf healing them earlier. With as much attention as she could spare while gathering up the last of the cursed items left to be returned to the table, she watched as the dwarf scanned the man, hand steadily drifting lower and lower and-

“(Oh, _now_ he’s just pushing it.)”

She stumbled and nearly maimed herself on a deceptively innocent-looking acorn when the dwarf’s hand fell to hover in front of Sir Therabho’s groin.

And stayed there.

“Lad!” Thearabho grabbed the dwarf’s wrist and pulled it back up, looking disturbed. “Lad… is it me I should be worried about or you?”

Everyone else seems to have reacted in fairly similar ways to hers, so frozen they were. Bewilderment was the least of the visible emotions. With one exception.

“Young one,” Tethtoril asked, walking over and looking completely unruffled, unlike everyone else. “Dare I ask what you were doing?”

The dwarf gestured at the knitting needle that had been pulled out of the ceiling at some point. “Checking to make sure no effects lingered from the Impaler of Impotence.”

Hull started to cough violently.

Thearabho groaned hopelessly and sunk on the stool he’d eschewed up to that point, right arm propping his head against the table by the temple. “Forget cursed sporks, Gorion’s going to have my hide ten times over! Oh, I should have _known_ you wouldn’t miraculously develop the concept of boundaries in just a few days.” The knight sighed and looked straight at the dwarf, troubled. “Cyrus, Tethtoril was _right there_. From now on do me a favour and instead of you doing…” He gesticulated helplessly. “Just… ask the nearest grownup- the nearest _specialist…_ to see to things next time, alright? At least when they involve… private matters,” he finished lamely.

Cyrus frowned. “The letter of that request has been followed already.” The dwarf turned to the table and held out a hand above the closest cursed object to resume his earlier task while he talked. He seemed to have gained enough familiarity with the process to focus well enough that he could spare sufficient focus to continue the conversation. “And the spirit of that request would have been inefficient in this case, and possibly dangerous. In absence of Father or Khelben, I _am_ the chief specialist on the items here.”

Did he say _Khelben_?

“Gods have mercy…” The knight sighed explosively and rubbed at his eyes. “I suppose I should take what I can get and be glad you’re not too traumatised to interact with me after all this just now.” The man huffed and glared at the dwarf half-heartedly. “All the same, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t get too hands-on when it comes to… these things.” And suddenly he looked wary again. “Or do you have certain _personal_ interests I should know about?”

Cyrus blinked. “Of course I do.”

Near her, Theodon froze in horror. “(Oh _Oghma_ , no! If _he_ goes ahead and makes a move, that’s it for the rest of us!)”

Not that she was in a much calmer state. Or Hull.

Wait, did he just say _us_?!

Thearabho himself wasn’t doing much better. “Lad… I think there might have been a _wee_ misunderstanding somewhere along the line.” He was clearly struggling with his self-control.

“I must admit to some confusion. Am I not supposed to be emotionally invested in your wellbeing?” The earnest confusion actually shocked her, though not as much as what came next. “Unless you meant to ask me whether or not I was feeling any amorous feelings towards you?”

Hull fell over laughing.

“Oooh…” Thearabho hung his head, looking defeated.

“Or perhaps your inquiry was meant more with regards to any possible lust on my part?” Cyrus asked thoughtfully. She couldn’t believe it. She could see it but couldn’t believe it, but there it was. He was actually being serious about what he was saying. “You have been personally teaching me wrestling for years so, logically, we both would have noticed the physical signs of such long before now if that was the case. On the other hand, my lack of ability to become emotionally invested in anything would have prevented me from experiencing any urges in either direction. Considering recent developments and their implications, your question now carries considerable merit. I shall have to contemplate it at length and experiment.”

“Sweet, merciful Triad,” Thearabho sunk his face in both hands in despair, voice empty and sepulchral. “I’m going to die.”

“Other than from old age at some point, no you are not. Any odds of you suffering death in the near term have already disappeared.”

“Gorion is going to kill me!”

“… I cannot see why that would occur, unless you are referring to some chain of events that I am unable to envision due to lacking the appropriate context?”

“(It’s like watching an aberration from the Far Realm trying and failing to understand proper sapient life,)” Theodon quietly marvelled for the both of them.

“First Reader, please ensure my body is cremated and my ashes are scattered to the four winds instead of delivered to my family. They, at least, played no part in this tragedy and should be spared Gorion’s inevitable, total and inescapable retribution.”

“Of course,” Tethtoril nodded gravely. “You have my word that this is what will occur if the eventuality you fear comes to pass.”

“This is known as melodrama, yes? It appears I still do not have the experience necessary to properly respond to it in social settings. I continue to be a distant second-best to Imoen in this, it seems. Unless it is meant as a roundabout way to transmit that your interest in my answer to your inquiry into any potential infatuation on my part is greater than you feel comfortable expressing?”

“Oh Great Hand of Righteousness!” Therabaho dropped his head on the table with a loud smack. “Loyal Torm, please forgive your dumbass servant! Though I have only ever striven to be worthy of serving you in death as I do in life, I am instead bound to suffer eternally in the special hell reserved for those guilty of corrupting impressionable young minds!”

Those gathered, from Theodon and herself to Reevor and even Tethtoril, found themselves unable to do anything but stand and watch in silence. The only exception to that was Hull, who was pounding on the floor with his fist and could barely breathe, he was laughing so hard.

All but Cyrus, that is, who switched from focusing on draining enchanted objects while talking, to focusing on talking while draining enchanted objects. He was looking at Thearabho again at least. “My intellectual contemplation of the implications carried by your question can hardly carry such karmic weight. And that aside, this outburst is rather belated, you realise. If your doom is determined by instilling lustful thoughts into the minds of the younger generations, then nothing has truly changed from how it has been since Gorion and I came here, if not before.”

Thearabho slowly lifted his head and stared at the dwarf, uneasily. “Cyrus, that’s enough.” But he seemed unable to actually order him to do anything, even though he clearly had the authority. “That’s more than enough. _Really_. I dare say we know _much_ more about each other than before. Now spare this decrepit old man’s feelings and give my poor, ageing mind a while to process things. Say a month or five.”

“Oh _hells_ no!” Hull gasped, finally climbing to his feet after having laughed uncontrollably all this time. “Don’t think you can just bury _this_ goldmine! Cyrus!” He switched tracks immediately, and though he still had to lean against the table for support, his voice was strong. “Go on, say what you were going to say. Give us _details_.”

The dwarf turned his head – and for a second Theodon looked in the corner of her eye like he was about to faint or drop dead entirely, so terrified he was – but did not pause or otherwise hint that anyone besides those already involved were relevant to the conversation. “Are you sure I should do that?”

“Who cares what _he_ thinks!?” Thearabho balked. “ _I’m_ sure! Do _not_ give any details!”

“Alright.”

Hull blinked, incomprehending. “Alright? What do you mean ‘alright’!? Just like that!?”

“Yes.”

Bizarrely, after a shockingly transparent burst of relief, Sir Thearabho actually looked fondly at the dwarf for a moment, even though it didn’t diminish the aura of dread and hopelessness he was labouring under.

“Well _fine!_ ” Hull burst, throwing his arms in the air. “ _Be_ all _sensitive_ and _mindful_ of peoples’ feelings! I guess it was inevitable it would happen when I least liked it, if ever!”

It made no sense, but that outburst only seemed to surprise the dwarf. “That was only distantly secondary to my concerns.”

Thearabho’s fond look abruptly died.

“Say what?” Hull asked.

“I mean that I honestly believed you to be the last person who needed an explanation as to why the Gatewarden would make ardent admirers out of so many lads and lasses. Even after disregarding the draw that authority inherently brings all on its own. As a warrior he is valorous, mighty, exceptionally skilled and rightfully famed. As a person he is seasoned, learned, respectable and highly experienced in many matters. And as a man he is tall, self-possessed, heartily vigorous and very well endowed in all respects.”

Though Tethtoril managed to keep his impassive mien, Hull and Reevor gaped stupidly at the dwarf that was calmly inspecting the small pen knife he’d just purified. Rather like Theodon and herself, she had to admit, with whatever part of her mind wasn’t too busy being flabbergasted at the sheer audacity of that… that… that…

And out of the dwarf’s line of sight, Sir Thearabho sat and just stared at him, stunned beyond words and his face a truly strange set of colours, faint remnants of an incandescent blush visibly draining into something approaching bone-white, but at the same time also green around the gills, somehow.

Several minutes later, the dwarf finally deigned to acknowledge the frozen tableau around him. Which was to say, he reached out in her direction and telekinetically appropriated the acorn she’d gingerly picked up a minute earlier.

Jolted out of her shock, the woman hurried to deposit the rest of the items that had been scattered about, followed by Theodon and Reevor soon after. That they all returned to their previous state of shock seemed to matter not at all after that. Cyrus Anwar merely proceeded to drain the last of the objects, and when he was finally done with that he swept those immediately in front of him aside to make room for a set of stationery, and a blank scroll that had come floating over from the shelves across the room.

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised. You should know by now that you haven’t a hope of getting a rise out of the little guy, especially if you don’t directly address him,” Hull pointed out to his supposed superior as he finally took a seat of his own, as if anything synonymous with ‘little man’ wasn’t a terrible insult when dwarves were concerned. “He has no sense of humour whatsoever, isn’t that right Cyrus?”

“As of the day before yesterday, I am not actually sure.” His attention was obviously centred on the scroll he was scribing but he replied readily enough even so.

“Well whatever!” Hull huffed. “I can just track down and talk about this to the _relevant parties_ in my own time.”

Thearabho glared at the Watcher, but before he could say anything about it the dwarf actually beat him to it.

“You are unlikely to gain any insight superior to the one I have already provided.” Thick fingers guided the brush across the paper with surprising grace. “Unless you mean to explore the one dimension of the present issue which I did not have a chance to bring up. In which case I recommend asking for the First Reader’s assistance.”

“I’m not even going to ask,” the Gatewarden sighed.

“ _I_ am,” Hull frowned. “What ‘dimension’ is that? Why would Tethtoril need to be involved?”

“As the head priest here, he is best positioned to help sort out the theological implications.”

There was lull in the conversation not unlike what she remembered the first ancient tomb she adventured into.

“Theological implications?” Thearabho echoed faintly, to his immediate regret.

“Of the various relationship dynamics as envisioned by the aforementioned third parties. More specifically, in relation to how individuals generally strive to pattern themselves after the gods they revere. Which, in your case, since the god of Duty and Loyalty is also the god of _Obedience_ , would imply-”

“Tethtoril,” Thearabho croaked faintly, looking as dead as he sounded. “My epitaph. Here lies Thearabho of Crimmor, Gatewarden of Candlekeep. An angry father killed him with his mind for irrevocably ruining the innocence of his young, guileless son.”

“I shall remember.”

This was seriously starting to make her wonder what kind of dwarf this Cyrus’ father even was. With the regard and dread he was being spoken of by even the de facto leader of the fortress library, the woman actually wondered if he was nobility, maybe even a High Old One. It would certainly explain the penchant for revenge and implied ability to see it happen no matter what anyone might have to say on the matter. But wouldn’t that sort of status mean the dwarf would have stayed ensconced deep in some underground settlement somewhere? Instead of coming within a hundred miles of the very idea of moving into a mostly human fortress with mostly human denizens and mainly human gods?

“What are you doing, anyway?” Hull finally asked the source of their collective consternation, peering at the scroll as well as he could from across the table in an attempt to force some of the awkwardness aside.

“It seems to be a portion of a Nether scroll,” Tethtoril replied instead, making her mind roll with shock.

Nether scrolls! The scrolls that described fundamental magical theory and of which only two sets were known to exist! Her knowledge of lore was not too in-depth with regards to the arcane, but the Nether Scrolls were a legendary prize, with virtually no limit on how much knowledge could be contained on any one of the fifty scrolls! New information appeared whenever the existing content was read. Their scholarly and empowering value was such that the material worth of what was effectively gold, metal or platinum made flexible, like paper, was as _nothing_.

And this person could reproduce them from _memory_?

Wait, did that mean Candlekeep had some of the Nether Scrolls in its keeping? How did no one know of such a thing? How were there no _rumours_ of such a thing!?

“Or, rather, a specific section of them,” Tethtoril amended from where he was standing next to the dwarf.

That’s not much better!

“In fact, it seems the Little Prince is creating a replica of the decoy scroll most likely to be found lying around in random ruins, for mages with more ambition than sense to find.”

So he _was_ some sort of dwarven roy- WAIT! What was that? Decoy scroll? What were they talking about?

And why did Thearabho look so confounded? “Cyrus, _please_ tell me this isn’t you taking measures so that you can ‘contemplate at length and experiment’ with my terrible joke from earlier.”

“This is not me taking measures so that I can contemplate at length and experiment your perfectly pertinent question of earlier.”

“Oh,” even after everything, the Gatewarden was still fully willing to believe him automatically, despite how disturbed he still was. “Well… good then.”

“I suppose there’s nothing else for it then,” Hull mused. “What’s the scroll for?”

“A bud in need of nipping.” The dwarf put his brush away and shook the scroll to dry the gold and silver ink on it, blowing on it for good measure, then said “Honoured tutor, you may feel free to immobilise our guest now.”

Before she had even a moment’s respite to process that, the woman felt herself go completely still and unable to move under her own power.

The same moment, Theodon jumped away, landing at Reevor’s side with a wand or rod of some sort suddenly in his hand, his face startled but hard.

Alarm flared inside her, but she could show none of it as Tethtoril dropped the hand he’d just used to immobilise her.

“Oh look,” Sir Thearabho of Crimmor said as he rose and turned to face her, voice equal parts grim and relieved. “A distraction.”

“I will not claim that a lack of sense of humour makes people boring _ever_ again,” Hull proclaimed lowly, equally alert and focused on her as he approached in step with the Gatewarden.

“So, what is it this time?” Tethtoril asked, following in the wake of the dwarf with his arms up his sleeves. His level tone somehow sent her skipping right past helpless startlement and right into terror. “Another assassin sent to claim your life?” Her heart gave a panicked lurch and her temples throbbed violently. “Or perhaps something more subtle and devious? I never could find any physical or spiritual signs to suggest any truth to the plight described by this particular lad.”

“Lady,” the unnatural magic eater corrected as he neared. “She is precisely what she claims.”

She might have trusted a hope if not for the hard looks still being sent her way from all directions.

“Sure coulda fooled me,” Reevor sneered from aside, the change in situation making him braver than up to that point. He was holding a three-legged chair like it was a club. “He looks like a lad, walks like a lad and sounds like a lad.”

The wild beating of her heart gave another lurch, but she wasn’t sure if it was from terror or anger.

“Hold her still please.”

Hull and the Gatewarden each grabbed tight on either arm and pulled as far as they could stretch in both directions just as the magic hold released her-

A dagger of bone appeared in the magic eater’s raised hand to cut right through her, slicing through the top of her head and then all the way down, separating her in two perfect halves. Before she could move. Or speak. Before she could _think_.

Only it didn’t. The spectral weapon sliced through her without slicing, and in that moment where she toppled backwards, her heart felt like it would burst out of her and she was viscerally grateful that she was still safely trapped inside this flesh and bone and blood, inside this human man’s body she so despised.

Then the scroll’s magic rushed into her and she no longer felt even that.

Her breasts hit the ground first and the flash of pain almost stunned her, so new it was, but she didn’t have the mental capacity to curse herself for twisting her ankle and turning haphazardly after scrambling backwards. She didn’t register anything she heard after her mind realized what her previous thoughts even meant. Neither did the sight of anything past her much slimmer fingers carry any importance once her eyes fell on the two prominences she had grasped after her fall.

The next while, it could have been a minute or it could have been a day, passed in a haze of shock and unfamiliar feelings, her body feeling heavy and light in places, her clothes too loose and yet too tight, her sandals seeming like they would slide off if she tried to ever walk, but it impressed on her over the mind-numbing realisation that she, for the first time in her life, did not feel trapped within her own flesh. With a drunken sort of urgency, she patted herself all over, checking and rechecking to see if what she was feeling was true, then she did it again. And again. The only reason she did not do it a fourth time was because the weight of everything fell upon her and she couldn’t even properly breathe any longer.

Yet more time later, she was seated at the table, propped against it really – she might have been helped there by one or more of the others but she didn’t truly recall – while she tried to gain control of herself with little success. Meanwhile, after Theodon took his leave for whatever reason, the others marvelled over her situation, pondered their prior inability to change her to her proper gender, wondered over why they hadn’t detected any curses preventing the desired magic from working, then gasped in alarm and horror when the magic-eater told them it hadn’t been a curse but a blessing and what was he _thinking_ , who _cared_ if it was Cyric’s blessing and the world was better off without it anyway – gender confusion? What a crazy idea! – especially considering the reasons that particular God already had to want him dead, _never mind_ the horrifying implications of Cyric being able to conceal such activities even from God-assisted divinations with the illusion portfolio he murdered Leira for, and who cared that the ‘blessing’ had been applied in the womb and would have spread to other yet-to-be-born like a virus over time, what was he _thinking_ undoing a god’s blessing, was he absolutely _crazy,_ **you didn’t just _do_ that!**

“The odds of my death haven’t changed-”

“Like that makes a difference!” Hull roared, as if the dwarf’s decision to fulfil her deepest wish was something he found both emotionally offensive and physically painful. “Odds are that upstart God will want to keep you alive for years before it even _occurs_ to him that’s an option!”

“By Moradin’s Hammer, what are we gonna _do_ with ye, lad?” Reevor lamented, hands twisting at each other nervously. “Every year tha’ passes, ye just get more ‘n’ more troublesome!”

“We have the best wards you’re likely to find this side of Shadowdale but gods are _not_ so easily stymied!” Thearabho shouted.

“Oghma and Deneir are gods of _knowledge,_ not secrecy, and while the Most Holy Mystra is Cyric’s sworn foe, you are _not_ high in her regard!” Tethtoril did not shout, but his displeasure was no lesser for it.

“And even if you could justify the risk, _which you can’t_ , you don’t just up and spit in a God’s eye for a total stranger!” Hull yelled, voice breaking as anger was overcome by something else. “Hells, you should think twice even if it’s _not_ a total stranger! I wouldn’t expect you to do something so insane for _me_ , and you just up and… you just…” The Watcher choked on his words, and for a long moment she actually thought he might hit the dwarf or perhaps cry, so brightly his eyes shone, but he managed to prevent both. Prevent them, unlike the embrace he pulled the dwarf into, fierce and tight with all the terror one could feel. He opened his mouth but only a raw noise came out, so he swallowed the impulse and just clung to him, eyes shut.

“We never should have let you out those gates,” Sir Thearabho said sadly.

“I agree,” the dwarf murmured, returning Hull’s embrace fully.

“You would,” Tehtoril sighed. “You were most against it.”

And despite her misgivings – outrage really – at having been subjected to such aggressive treatment and manhandling, she felt like she was watching an injustice. Though she did not share in the naivety of peace-lovers, honour there most definitely was in war – except when there wasn’t, but she had no time for inner voices today, especially those she had silenced long ago – and she decided that she would intervene, if only to express her gratitude to the magic-eating dwarf for finally turning her into a proper woman.

And with that thought, her whole train of thought faltered and fell by the wayside at the realisation that she was finally a _proper woman_ and the subsequent breathlessness.

She came back to herself some more time later, just in time to hear the dwarf – Reevor – explode at his kinsman.

“Ye damn brat!” the old soldier wailed. “What are ye thinkin!” The woman raised her head from the table just in time to see the old soldier bear-hug Cyrus Anwar and burst into tears. “Whut’re yuh thinkin’ getting me th’ best present I’ve ever gott’n’n me life!” He bawled, tears and snot pouring freely down his cheeks and his ample facial hair. “Don’ ye be thinkin’ ye’re off tha hook just fer... fer… fer givin’ me the best present I’ve ever gotten in me life!”

The Priestess of Tempus looked from the tearful display to the opened window through which two flailing rodents flew only to land in the cage that hadn’t been in the room before and was now housing what had to be every single rat currently within Candlekeep’s various edifices. And its vast basements. And catacombs. And possibly the surrounding environs. A cage squashed full up to waist-level with writhing, panicked, madly squeaking, live rats.

The scrying pool right next to the cage seemed to show a bird’s eye view of some warehouse or other, but it really couldn’t capture her attention considering this newest… development.

In any other situation she should have cursed herself for ever thinking it a good idea to come to what, it turned out, was a madhouse instead of the pinnacle of tranquil contemplation on the Sword Coast. As it stood, however, she was sure that there was nothing that could bring her down from her euphoria for _hours_. At the very, _very_ least.

“Ye damn brat, ‘m’not just gunna fergiva ya fer bein’ a blockhead ‘n hasty ‘n too generous fer yer own good!” Reevor sobbed, withdrawing and then roughly pushing his kinsman for Hull to take charge of. “Here, ye can hav’im back. I gotta… I just… I gotta.” The old dwarf made the mistake of laying eyes on the cage even as he tried to loom and look fearsome. “I… I cannae give’im a proppa what fer ‘ntil I kill all’o these d-damn rats!” But after waging what looked like an internal battle, he just fell upon the cage doing his best to enfold as much as possible with his arms, bursting into a renewed stream of noisy, fat, nose-dripping tears. “I’m gunna finally _KILL ALL’O THESE DAMN RATS!_ ”

The rats shrieked like a horde of mad banshees and writhed like a nest of carrion worms freshly undug.

Hull held Cyrus Anwar by the shoulders as he beheld the ridiculous sight. “I almost want to order you to never ‘nip a bud’ or ‘tie up a loose end’ again without first explaining to us your intentions and describing your plans in exhaustive detail.”

“But given this is _you_ , odds are good that things would not conclude in any less outrageous a fashion,” Tethtoril said with a sigh.

“And then we’d have to explain to Gorion why we thought it was worth reducing your _efficiency_ , or some other such thing,” Thearabho finished their shared opinion, looking like he was refraining from saying anything further.

The dwarf guessed it anyway, which she supposed she should not have been surprised by anymore. “The demands of providing me with a semblance of a proper upbringing did not leave father prone to patience or rationality where I am concerned.” He looked up at them two wistfully. “I am sorry.”

“Oh young one,” Tethtoril murmured sadly.

They all fell silent for a time after that, if one were to disregard Reevor’s tearful, hiccupping exultations. She wondered, for a few moments, what that last exchange was even supposed to mean, but her own change in circumstance rearrested her thoughts soon after, so that, too, passed from her mind.

This time, when she managed to refocus on the surrounding world, there was a wall compartment open next to the shelf rack and Sir Thearabho was checking the younger dwarf over, the latter having equipped himself for travel, including a surprisingly ornate greatsword whose hilt stuck above his left shoulder.

“There we go, all ready to head out again,” the Gatewarden spoke lowly, not entirely happy at the thought. “Unless there is still some loose end to take care of?” he sounded surprisingly torn on the idea.

“Just one.” Then the dwarf came over to stand across the table from her and studied her intensely enough that she forced the rest of her scattered mind on him.

“Yes?” It came out later than she intended but she felt it perfectly justified.

“The gender-swap is permanent and impossible to reverse by anything short of divine involvement, and is something I would have offered in any event. However, given the events of the morning, I decided to include certain guarantees.”

That managed to snap her back into focus like nothing else could. “And what would that be?” He voice was deceptively calm, but only because she was too wrung out to react overtly.

“If you share anything of what you were party to or witnessed in this laboratory this morning that is not specifically to do with you, a second embedded gender swap spell will trigger, after which you will be castrated in the most excruciating manner I was able to think up.”

She could not help it. She gaped in shock.

And while the same could – barely – not be said of the Gatewarden or First Reader, it most definitely could be said about Hull. “Holy Oghma on stilts, boy! You were already hopeless before, so how did your social skills manage to get even worse!?”

“That is not altogether relevant since I am not engaging in diplomacy but in _barter_.” Having said his piece, he addressed her again, unconcerned by her naked shock. Or everyone else’s for that matter. “Chance had you witness a highly embarrassing situation that could cause much awkwardness, embarrassment and worse if shared. On that note, I will be straightforward. I greatly respect and admire Sir Thearabho and I am not inclined to suffer any slights against him or his reputation.”

The man in question was about to say something, but his mouth clamped shut and his dawning glare faltered. Then he dropped his head with a groan. “Of _course_ you wouldn’t be thinking of yourself! What was I thinking?”

Thinking of himself? What about thinking about her!? This was her life they were making light of!

“I was also quite exhaustive when formulating the conditions, so expecting you to remember the exact letter of this pact would be unreasonable.” What pact!? This was extortion! “Which is why I made sure that, whenever you are about to break any of the conditions, you will feel a twinge in the front-most part of your upper torso.”

This… This…

Did he just…

Did he just admit to _cursing her breasts!?_

She opened her mouth only to close it several times. She just…

She had no words.

“And here I thought everything up to now had inured us to further shock,” Tethtoril said blandly. “I have lived to be surprised.”

“And considering that just a few feet away there’s a dwarf that just got gifted a huge cage full of rats and reacted to it by achieving _closure_ , that’s sure saying something,” Hull commiserated.

Cyrus Anwar turned around, strode straight over to First Reader Tethtoril and gave him a long hug. Just like that. No lead-up, no nothing.

Then, after the man returned and held it for a while, the dwarf broke away, walked to Sir Thearabho of Crimmor and treated him to the exact same thing.

The man stiffened and even looked like he would back away for a moment, but ultimately stood his ground and awkwardly returned the gesture, laying his hands on the dwarf’s shoulders. He obviously didn’t expect the embrace to last long, but the shorter man didn’t agree with him and just stayed that way.

“You’ve gotten all touchy feely lately,” the knight mumbled awkwardly.

“People should hug more,” the dwarf murmured. “There would be a lot less murder then.”

“Oh lad…” All the stiff wariness in the tall man’s countenance just seemed to seep out along with whatever cheer he still tried to keep in his manner. He closed his eyes and finally returned the embrace fully, with the same fierceness Hull had displayed not that much earlier. “You exasperate me to exhaustion.”

“I am sorry.”

“But you won’t let it get in the way of doing the right thing so we may as well resign ourselves to forever suffering more of the same,” Hull muttered.

“I suppose there are worse approaches to life,” Tethtoril mused from next to him.

The men stood pensively as a dwarf embraced his mentor, as if a woman whose life had just been turned inside out repeatedly during the past half an hour wasn’t just a few feet away. All her life she’d hoped, dreamed and envisioned an end to her suffering, thought about how remarkable the conditions might have to be for such a turning point in her life. Having it solved on a stranger’s whim and then dismissed along with her like something completely inconsequential never figured into her imagination. It was impossible. Maddening.

It _rankled_.

“I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing that Imoen wasn’t here for all this,” Hull spoke into the ensuing, rat-skittering, sob-dappled silence. “She would have gotten some weird ideas at the very least. That girl is either right or completely off base. Nothing ever comes in moderation with her, that’s for sure.” The man scowled. “I wish you hadn’t picked that up from her.” He sighed explosively. “Oh well. Now where’s my goodbye hug?”

The dwarf unfolded from a much calmer and content Thearabho and gave the Watcher what he wanted, much to his satisfaction. Then, finally, he stepped away and, as the woman felt an undetectable pressure unravel itself from around her, turned eastward with eyes focused on something far beyond the wall. “That should be far enough,” he murmured. Then he nodded in her direction – she fought not to show her true feelings on it – and looked at the three men in turn, then sent a soft gaze in the still self-absorbed Reevor, before finally settling on the Gatewarden himself one last time. “Be well.” And he teleported away.

The four humans stared at the spot where he’d just been.

“He shouldn’t have been able to do that,” the Gatewarden said flatly.

“As if you’re capable of being surprised at anything he does at this point,” Hull scoffed. “Let’s focus on what’s really important here! Namely that he looked at _you_ last! Since when does he like you more than me!?”

“Hull?”

“Yes sir,” the Watcher said sarcastically.

“Get back to work.”

“Right you are, sir! Let’s go!”

It took several seconds for her to realise she was the one he’d addressed.

“Come on, up and off you go!”

The woman obeyed automatically, then cursed internally over her reflexive compliance and the days of shellfish gathering that instilled it in her.

“Now just think! All we have to do is get you some clothes that fit and you can go back to gathering shellfish!”

The woman grit her teeth, then deliberately reasserted her resolve to not allow anything, not even having her pride and dignity trampled, to ruin her euphoria over finally having her lifetime wish made true. Even if it had only happened on some mad stranger’s whim. Even if the fulfilment of her life’s dream had been brushed aside like it didn’t matter. Even if it had been treated like it didn’t matter. Like she didn’t matter. There would be plenty of opportunity to channel her aggression later. Once she was away from the keep. Tempus would see her through.

“And I realise it might not be my business, but now that the whole reason behind your conflicted existence is gone – at least until you start getting shunned by Tempus’ clergy for being a woman now, which I hear is a problem – you might want to reinvent yourself properly.” She had _always_ been a woman regardless of her body’s physical makeup, but oh, what was the use? She would not allow even this despicable man’s insipid chatter to ruin this moment. “Maybe you’ll even choose a better name, since the one you made for yourself as a way to rebel against your tragic fate isn’t exactly all that inspired.”

Oh…

Oh he wouldn’t _dare_.

“I mean, ‘Mizhena’ doesn’t sound _bad_ , but the effort of putting together syllables from several different languages is kind of wasted on pretty much everyone, except those of us who do know the languages and then it’s obvious that you’re just overcompensating.”

Oh that utter _bastard_.


	26. Mistaken Assumptions

Father’s relief washed over him before he even touched down on the roof, almost the moment he teleported within sight of the Friendly Arm Inn in fact. It felt like a wave of cool water, or perhaps a lake whose surface glimmered not because of light coming from outside, but from the depths down under. Lights and shadows of feeling and thought, a pool finally overflowing after simmering for so many hours with the tension of worry, dread, separation anxiety, and one freezing moment of panic when Gorion finally tracked down Bentley Mirrorshade and found out just what his son had been up to over the past two days. All of which could have been avoided if Cyrus had just taken time to message Gorion during his lengthy flight from Baldur’s Gate to Candlekeep. Or before he set out. Or in the many hours before even that.

The feeling washed over and through him as Gorion embraced him, and Cyrus Anwar contemplated his actions since his departure all through his stilted Sending upon being greeted by Amanther and after. All of which happened within mere days of having the gall to berate Khelben Arunsun and Elminster Aumar over their own abject failures at communication.

Conclusion.

“I am a presumptuous, self-absorbed hypocrite.”

Gorion laughed hoarsely but only hugged him tighter. Even though the closest thing to an objective analysis of his Father’s emotional state had just made it clear once and forever that Cyrus Anwar was the worst son ever. Which was the opposite of what Gorion himself felt, naturally, in total defiance of the stress he’d been under for the past two days because of him.

Fathers were strange.

Cyrus hugged him back anyway, and for long enough to catch up on even the missed opportunity of two days before, when Gorion was too tired to stand after everything that transpired.

It would have to be one of the things he’d be fixing soon, but it seemed it would have to wait. Imoen and the others were already outside, having already eaten breakfast and fully kitted themselves to head out. Gorion explained it all and brought him up to speed on everything else he deemed pertinent as he ushered Cyrus into the keep and down the stairs level after level. “Are you sure you’re ready for travel, son?” the man eventually asked worriedly. “You haven’t slept these past three days, as I understand it.”

“I am fine.” And he was. “I’ll tell you if that changes.”

They ultimately didn’t make it all the way to the ground floor, if it could even be called such a thing seeing as it took a full flight of stairs to reach the main entrance from ground level outside. Instead, one of the scullery boys intercepted them on the first floor and led them to Bentley and Gellanna Mirroshade’s own quarters. It had clearly once been the keep’s war room, given how many murders, tortures, sacrificial rituals and slaughters had been planned within, and the multitude of battles and wars before Bhaal’s priest even took it over. It was a… disconcerting experience, to be aware of all that at the same time as the warm, loving atmosphere the place now boasted. The war room had long since been refurbished into a two-story set of apartments built and furnished to gnomish height and comfort, while still being tall enough that even the tallest men could walk unbowed. Which was a good thing because Gorion was above average in height even for a human.

The boy led them through the receiving room, then down a hallway, even that not quite cramped. The number of rooms clearly indicated past habitation by more than 2 individuals, which made him realise that he barely knew anything about the Mirrorrshades at all, if he didn’t know how many children they had, if any. Finally, they came at what turned out to be Bentley Mirroshade’s private kitchen, which was where the boy left them. A masterfully appointed kitchen that happened to be located right above the main Friendly Arm kitchens themselves, and had precisely the same size.

It seemed that Bentley Mirroshade’s claims that he _himself_ could serve every dish this side of Shadowdale and Waterdeep weren’t mere boasts. A conclusion only enforced by the sizable, interconnected set of containers that the large, mahogany table all but groaned under, and which the gnome was mid-way through filling with what had to be several dozen different ingredients, spices, crockery, cutlery and even fully prepared preserves, drinks and freshly coocked dishes. Most of the latter were even still steaming as the gnome carefully stuffed them inside metal boxes or, as the currently was doing to a marvellously fragrant lamb soup, poured them into large flasks straight from the pot.

“I can now rightly claim to know what ‘mouth-watering’ feels like,” Cyrus realized aloud.

“You!” Bentley growled, brandishing a ladle.

“Hello good gnome.”

“Don’t you ‘good gnome’ me! I come home to find my guard captain back up and about because you drove you father into such a worry that he couldn’t sleep without working himself to exhaustion! And because I then forgot to tell your poor father what you’ve been up to – it turns out that finding my erstwhile _dead and buried_ good friend resurrected was a mite distracting, don’t you know – you father spent yet another half a day wondering if you were alright or if you’d instead wound up half-eaten by a giant worm in some ditch! And when you _do_ finally deign to contact him it’s _already past sunset_! Because Garl forbid it occur to you to do that at any point during your prior _hours-long trip_! I don’t want to hear it!” But he wasn’t going to say anything. “You just shut up, sit down and eat your breakfast so I can go about my business in peace!”

A strong case could be made for Bentley Mirrorshade having no cause to berate him that way, considering that it was he who summoned them to his kitchen in the first place, and what did Khalid and Jaheira do that prevented them from telling Gorion about events? But Cyrus found himself pulled onto a stool at the gnome-sized table in front of a deliciously-smelling bowl of potato broth with spices, herbs and meatballs, so alright. He’d just go ahead and eat and find himself thoroughly distracted.

Mmm.

Twenty minutes later, Cyrus was comfortably full and wiping his mouth with a napkin while mentally going over the conversation between Gorion and Bentley that he’d entirely ignored while trapped in the passionate throes of delicious bliss, and that thought seemed rather on the verge of getting away from him already.

Dammit.

He had to get a handle on this and fast. A full emotional range should _not_ cause him to be overcome by sensations every time he tasted something new. Or nominally new, since it wasn’t like he hadn’t eaten potato and meatball broth before. Well, he was _reasonably_ sure he shouldn’t zone out that way. It wasn’t like there was a precedent for his predicament that he knew. At least he’d only ignored his surroundings this time, instead of being completely oblivious to them like before. And why hadn’t the ration bar caused anything like this after the carrion crawler?

Another thing to investigate.

There was always something.

Like what Bentley Mirrorshade was actually putting together that had his Father so enthralled. Well, the small part of his Father that wasn’t focused on Cyrus himself, those bright, coloured, iridescent sunrays that only ever shone for him and him alone.

“Finally back with us then?” the gnome grunted while he emptied a whole sack of grain flour into one of the many containers arrayed on the table, obviously expanded on the inside.

“Yes.”

The gnome huffed at his brevity but said nothing more, focusing instead on finishing what he was doing. Which was to fill a myriad of different types of flasks, bottles, kegs, boxes, tubes, pots, pouches and bags with an abundant variety of drinks, brews, flour, fresh fruits, dry fruits, fresh vegetables, preserved vegetables, fresh herbs, ground herbs, spices, grains and meats (cut, tender, smoked, salted, sausage-spun and even fresh cuts of pork, lamb, veal, chicken and rabbit). Added to those were five heat-insulated, tube-like containers filled each with a different soup, stew, sauce and broth, including the type Cyrus had just partaken from. All spacious enough inside to accommodate roughly thirty portions each despite being just half the length of Cyrus’ forearm on the outside, on average. And that was not even counting all the raw ingredients going in, which dwarfed the pre-made dished in quantity. Looking at the subtle workings of matter revealed spells inlaid in each container, not only to expand the volume but also to preserve the quality and freshness of whatever was put inside.

And all of those things were linked, hinged or tied amongst each other with rust-proof steel and waterproof string.

It seemed they would be traveling without the worry of lacking in delicious meals, in complete defiance of Elminster Aumar’s ideal of proper adventuring.

Revenge was sweet.

Finally, when the gnome walked over to their side of the table and finished filling, shutting or tying the various containers closed, Cyrus stood to get out of his way and Gorion gave voice to the appreciative bemusement he’d been feeling all that time. “What would you call this, if I may inquire?”

“I am glad you finally asked! _This…_ is the Mirrorshade Masterwork Meal Manifold!” Bentley Mirrorshade proudly proclaimed, gesturing grandly over the table-wide arrangement behind him. “Guaranteed to ensnare the nares, mystify the mouths, glut the gorges, sate the stomachs, and generally halt hunger, temper thirst and neatly nourish the expert explorer, intrepid investigator and even the most audacious adventurer for the next, best thirty days of your life!” The gnome timed his proclamation with a sudden, sharp tug on the handle closest to him.

Every box, tray, bag, pouch, stand, divider, even the milk, syrup and wine bottles with their own cut-out holders, all clanked and folded onto each other until there was just one, single long-coffer on the table five seconds later, the length of a greatsword. Then, to finish his demonstration, the Good Gnome folded it in perfect thirds and clasped it in place, leaving behind a single chest that was just the right size to ease into a standard travel backpack.

Bentley Mirrorshade stood and preened with both hands on his hips, unaware that his wife had appeared in the doorway behind him just as he began his spiel, having come through the staircase to the main kitchens below. Satisfaction and pride in a job well done mingled within him, shining brightly like a star amidst the backlight of hope/affection/how-am-I-going-to-cope-with-the-worry-while-you’re-out-there-in-the-big-bad-world-lad.

What a delight.

“Well?” The Good Gnome broke impatiently. “Don’t just stand there! You’re looking upon something that’s never been and never will be for sale you know!” So he should disregard the fact that the Good Gnome had basically made a sales pitch just now. Alright. “This is what you’ve driven me to with your brazen antics and complete inability to look after your own health, let alone account for what it does to your poor Father and everyone else! What do you have to say for yourself?”

“You are a miracle and the world is blessed for every moment of your life.”

Bentley Mirrorshade became an indignant, sputtering mess.

The moment loomed before him.

The dwarf couldn’t _predict_ what would come next exactly, it wasn’t even remotely to do with death, let alone the dredges of peace not governed by a deity of no true consequence. But he’d seen and experienced it many times in the past, for the other person to assume he was aiming for a reaction at their expense, or devised some other reason disbelieve and dismiss what he said as a joke or ignorance, when in fact he had only spoken the truth as he saw it.

Unlike all those times before, though, experience had _finally_ taught Cyrus Anwar how to achieve the right outcome here, and _life_ meant he cared enough to work for it.

He sunk to his knees and hugged the gnome.

Bentley squawked and almost entirely disappeared from sight.

But he didn’t fight, squirm or complain any more than the first time Cyrus had done this, and the disbelief blotting everything else morphed into fond exasperation, instead of the weary indulgence that it had been on the verge of degenerating into before. Indulgence that had so often turned to dismissal in the past, tainting all future interactions to the point of aversion and even disdain on people’s part. The ones who were not liable to treat him that way were those who accepted that he never said a lie in his life.

Bentley Mirrorsahde was already among them, somehow, but any chance to prevent needless emotional burdens was not something Cyrus was ready to let slip by, unlike for most of his life.

“Oh sure!” the gnome groused into his beard as if he wasn’t returning the hug as much as his small arms allowed. “Why not? Go on, get it out of your system why don’t you, you-you…you _damn brat!_ ”

Were he and Reevor acquainted now?

“I love you, Good Gnome.”

The reaction to that was like a cat that had just been stepped on, which was the last straw for Gellanna Mirrorshade.

She snickered.

The same moment, Bentley Mirrorshade went rigid in his arms like a board.

Then his soul erupted in a blaze of the darkest shade of pink Cyrus had ever seen, a blaze so mighty and overflowing that everything else in the world seemingly took the same tint.

Oh dear.

The gnome stiffly wriggled out of his hold – and Cyrus was mildly astounded that it was even possible to _wriggle_ stiffly – turned to behold his wife, turned back to him with the blankest red face Cyrus had ever seen on anyone, then opened his mouth and closed it shut, unable to even start figuring out what to say.

He then promptly turned invisible.

Gellanna burst into laughter.

Five seconds later, the Masterwork Mirrorshade Meal Manifold had been pushed into Cyrus’ arms, a _second_ Masterwork Mirrorshade Meal Manifold from the counter was in Gorion’s arms, Gellanna Mirrorshade was bent over laughing at the door, and Bentley Mirrorshade had already emptied his kitchen of his mortally embarrassed, invisible self through the other entrance.

For all the good it did him. Invisibility only made it _easier_ for Cyrus to perceive people’s true light.

“Oh lad!” Gellanna Mirrorshade gasped, finally getting control of herself. “Didn’t I tell you to go easy on him? It’s been over a decade since I could turn him that shade of red, and what about my feelings!? What’s it say that you got his heart to race faster than I do these days? I’m his wife, don’t you know! It’s not right!”

Bentley Mirrorshade banged his head against the wall two rooms away.

“Right then,” the woman breezed past them. “I suppose I’ll be the one to lead you out, seeing as my hubby’s indisposed.”

She saw them out of the apartment, then left them to go on their way while she “went and discussed matters of racing hearts.”

Standing outside the door, Gorion couldn’t help it. “Only you, son.” And he somehow said that with a completely straight face, somehow.

Trying not to dwell too much on the feeling that created in him, Cyrus slipped the food chest into his backpack and followed his father the rest of the way outside.

Fortunately, the emotion barely lasted until they reached the Friendly Arm Inn’s gates. Not so fortunately, that left him rather unprepared for experiencing that particular emotion’s fiercer variant.

To be fair, though, no one ever really expects Imoen’s inquisition.

Torrin Ironstar definitely didn’t, if his circumspect gaze at her was any indication. Cyrus supposed he shouldn’t blame him though, given the supremely cutting stare that Imoen was giving him. Ajantis Ilvastarr looked rather uncomfortable where he stood as well, a few feet behind and to her right, confirming that this stalemate had gone on for a while. Something that Cyrus’ own senses had already told him since he’d landed on the roof, but still. Khalid and Jaheira had long since readied themselves for sudden action as well, even though they wouldn’t look it from a cursory glance, reclining against the wall on the other side of the gateway from the other three. Ready to go to _Imoen’s_ assistance, interestingly enough.

Jaheira gave Cyrus a once-over before facing Gorion. Her soul softened ever so slightly from its guarded, steel/green/oak-coloured state at the sight of him.

“Dare I ask what we are walking in on?” Gorion spoke into the tense silence as he approached his old friends.

“The child seems to bear the High Old One a certain degree of mistrust,” Jaheira answered, nodding in Imoen’s direction. “Though she only said she was ‘on to him,’ after which she did not deign to explain herself to us,” she finished dryly.

“Well I am!” Imoen called from ahead, having obviously been listening in. “On to him, I mean. But you can be sure I wasn’t going to tell just _you_ two anything! I _used_ to tell people anything on my mind while expecting them to believe me, but I only wound up with a reputation for telling tall tales and crying wolf! It’s unconscionable! I never even _had_ a wolf! Meanwhile, everyone believes anything the guy with an _actual_ wolf says, no matter how absurd! Well _I’ve_ sure learned my lesson! I’m not going to say anything else without someone here to vouch for me!”

“That would be me, I take it?” Cyrus asked, walking over.

“Unfortunately,” Imoen grumbled. “Don’t take it the wrong way, but you’re actually the _worst_ character witness anyone could ever have.” How very gratifying. “I mean, you’re _you_.” Because she wasn’t trying hard enough, apparently. “But it’s not like I have anyone else here to vouch for my character.”

“What am I, then?” Gorion asked.

“Biased,” Imoen said flatly.

“Familiar with your character you mean, as you put it. And am I the only one who recalls you spending hours grilling me on all I knew about the Forgesmith yesterday?”

“Like I said, biased.”

Which made no sense, unsurprisingly.

That Cyrus was only just beginning to understand what it meant to feel, and was therefore emotionally compromised above and beyond anything Gorion ever allowed of himself, seemed to escape Imoen completely.

Or that _would_ have been his opinion, if not for his hard-gained ability to tell when Imoen was just putting on a show for whatever reason. Which she was, although whatever she was aiming to reveal felt like her genuine belief, whatever that might be.

Cyrus turned to the only fellow dwarf nearby. “Greetings, High Old One.”

“Good morning, young one. It gladdens me to see you hale.” The old priest sounded sincere and welcoming even as the glass-like flame of his spirit didn’t even flicker. He wore a suit of mithral plate – it gleamed in the sun yet his beard was of a purer white than even that – and carried a backpack and bedroll over his shoulder. No weapons though, which was strange. Perhaps he only used spell-shaped arms? It fit what Cyrus could read of his death-dealing history at least _somewhat_. The scenes of him fighting and killing orcs were particularly stark, and his weapon had certainly been conjured from nothing during many of those engagements, but not always. It was odd, though. The venerable dwarf’s history of death-dealing felt staggered, somehow. Disjointed even. Fractured. Yes, that was the word. Cyrus had never had such a fractured reading of anyone previously.

What did that say about the older dwarf’s spirit, Cyrus wondered.

And what did that say of his claims, in light of his alleged clan name? Young dwarf beheld older, eyes narrowed as Imoen’s feeling of suspicion settled into his own mind. “I am surprised you do not carry a mace.”

“Exactly!” Imoen crowed as if this was what she’d been waiting for, throwing her arms in the air. “He doesn’t have a mace!” Hope dropped her arms and pointed at Torrin accusingly. “You claim to be from clan Ironstar but you don’t have the signature darksteel mace! And don’t even try to hedge an answer on anything like ‘it was lost’ because that’s not even the half of it! The Ironstar clan may as well be extinct, and the few alleged survivors never travel without an assumed name! You don’t hear about Ironstar dwarves even among the assumed members believed to still live, and none of them are assumed to be located anywhere but Eversaka, Mintarn and below Mount Helimbar. And don’t even get me started on your claim of coming from Eartheart. The Great Rift is practically on the other side of the continent from the Spine of the World!”

Cyrus’ heart sank with every one of his conjectures that Imoen gave voice to. All those facts had come to him within moments of the priest’s introduction. He may still have many problems, but lack of imagination certainly wasn’t among them. But he’d ultimately dismissed them due to the simple fact that Torrin Ironstar had never sought them out at all. He also discounted the possibility of him being some disguised or shapeshifted assassin, as he would have seen through such things, and any designs on their lives would have jumped at him. Was he wrong then? If Imoen saw the same things he did and did not share his view, was he right to dismiss those concerns? But what about how the dwarf’s presence seemed to do precisely the _opposite_ of-

“See that?” Imoen curbed his thoughts, pining at the Forgesmith once again. “He doesn’t have anything to say!”

“Was I meant to?” Torrin Ironstar stood calmly in the centre of that gathering of now suspicious watchers, and the way his soul of glass only barely flickered seemed to suggest it was a genuine emotion. Cyrus felt more and more disquieted the more he beheld him. It made some unfamiliar emotion simmer at the back of Cyrus’s mind, this failure of the priest to call Imoen out on accusing him of duplicity based on information received at best second-hand. It wasn’t suspicion though. It was something else. Something a fair bit less sedate. Far less sedate that Torrin’s manner of speech. “You have already made up your mind without needing any further input from myself.”

“Well you’re no fun at all,” Imoen complained. “I know you’re supposed to be all calm and sage-like on the inside, but I thought you liked to act all innocent and wide-eyed otherwise? Don’t get me wrong, you’ve got the kindly disposition and idealism down pat, but the rest of your act is just off.”

Imoen the Magnificent was suddenly the target of blank looks from everyone there. No exception. Had Cyrus completely misunderstood her? It wouldn’t be the first time, he supposed.

“Oh come on!” the girl whined. “Don’t you all give me those looks! I can’t be the only one who figured it out!” She turned pleading eyes to him then. “Come on, Cyrus! Tell’em!”

“… I don’t know what you expect me to say.”

“Come on, it’s just so obvious!” Imoen pointed her finger at Torrin Ironstar for the third time. “He’s Moradin!”

For a moment, Cyrus felt rather like he was part of some frozen tableau. Everyone’s emotions certainly seemed to flicker and just… lull there, inside them. Like they felt as if even the merest internal reaction would be too much endorsement to the absurdity that had just been uttered. Except Torrin himself of course, for all that his eyebrows lifted. His strangely stalled inner light only flickered faintly in one, small point, before the emotion faded as if towed up and away.

“What!?” Ajantis blurted.

Correction. There was _one_ person sane enough to properly react to the claim.

“No, really, it makes perfect sense if you think about it. I mean, look at the scenario. ‘I am a dwarf that’s battled against an evil influence my entire life but finally healed and freed my soul against all odds after stabbing the murder god in the face and setting him on fire. Having been thus left in possession of more power than I know what to do with, I will soon require a teacher to take full control of it and my life before I do something rash or otherwise neglect to take steps to make the best of my situation. What option is there, then, but for the God of my race and kin to come down from the heavens and sign on as my mentor? For alas! The greatest and oldest sages of the world have proven more likely to cause than help avoid unfortunate situations! Like when my father almost got murdered the other night, or how I overdid it on the enthusiasm and accidentally killed a man that one time. And lo! Though my father is an Archmage of no small power, and wisdom enough to humble all but the greatest scholars of the land, the years have clearly shown that he cannot provide me with the help I need at all!”

Cyrus Anwar felt a spike of dismay towards Imoen for the first time ever. It startled him, which was the only reason why he did not say something to the cavalier way in which she had just hurt Gorion’s feelings.

Belatedly, it seemed to dawn on her as well. “Er… and by that I in no way mean it’s actually your fault or anything, uncle!”

“You always try to backtrack,” Gorion said mildly, perfectly masking the way those words had stabbed at him.

“And then you go and do it again, worse so than before,” Jaheira broke in, far less willing to let that unwarranted slight go unaddressed. “I have known you for barely over two days and it is already obvious to me. Well let me tell you that no matter how willing Gorion is to let such offenses go, the same will not work with me, child. I suggest you keep that in mind once we are on the road.”

“Sure Aunty Jaheira, whatever you say.”

“Profound disrespect aside,” Gorion cut in before Imoen’s flippancy actually stepped on Jaheira’s nerves. “I believe we can be reasonably certain we are not hosting a God within our midst.”

“That’s just what he wants us to think! And I’m not buying it! I mean come on, the setup is just too perfect, and don’t tell me you didn’t notice him channelling divine magic _through his body_ when Dwarves all need holy symbols unless they want their spells to go all nuts. Either way, it’s the Axe of the Dwarven Lords all over again. Only instead of posing as a wide-eyed apprentice to a highly experienced and legendary smith, he’s posing as an experienced warrior-priest to the inexperienced and naïve dwarf on the cusp of adulthood.”

“Naïve?” Cyrus blurted despite himself.

“’Political intrigue simply _does not happen_ among dwarves at all,’” Imoen flatly quoted him, even though he’d only spoken those specific words over a decade ago. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you staring in oh so grim disappointment and doleful dismay the other day at dinner, when his Godliness over there enlightened you on the particularities of Mirabar.”

Oh.

Alright then.

“Wait, what?” Ajantis said, having only grown more shocked the more Imoen’s ‘revelations’ wore on.

“Yes, that is an interesting point,” Torrin Ironstar mused, looking at Cyrus. “I believe I can understand some of why the young lady believes I have designs on becoming a teacher.”

“Don’t you change the subject on me!” Imoen demanded as if he’d done the opposite of encouraging the present line of discussion, pointing at him accusingly once again. “Even without everything else I said, what are the odds that a powerful warrior-priest of Moradin would just show up at the Friendly Arm inn on the same day as us?”

“No smaller than a Child of Bhaal arriving at the Friendly Arm inn on the same day as _him_ ,” Gorion retorted dryly. “And certainly higher than a Child of Bhaal arriving at the friendly Arm Inn in the company of a Chosen of Mystra, let alone _two_ , on the same day or not.”

Imoen opened her mouth, then closed it and dropped her hand for good measure. “No,” she pushed stubbornly. “I want to hear it from him. I want to hear it from you!” She whirled on the priests again, pointing accusingly for a third time. “You’re supposed to be lawful and good, right? So you can’t lie! Are you Moradin or are you not?”

Torrin Ironstar blinked. “I am not Moradin’s avatar.”

“Aha!” She crowed triumphantly. “A suspiciously specific denial!”

Gorion pinched his nosebridge.

That annoyed her. “Come on, even you can’t dispute that!”

“Child, Gods do not travel to the Prime Material in person unless they are _asking_ to be assassinated by rival Powers. _Which you should well know_. They send _avatars_. Which means that any denial on their part of being that god is always technically true because they are just _avatars_. Had he actually said ‘I am not Moradin’ it would have caused me to disbelieve your absurd beliefs _less_ , not _more_.” Father dropped his hand with a sigh and frowned at her. “You can thank the fact that Moradin and his Clerics are both good and lawful. A less scrupulous person might otherwise have tried to play on your delusions.”

“Delusions-!”

“Him traveling under the actual Ironstar name can also be excused for many reasons,” Gorion continued, mercilessly picking apart the fiction she had become so enamoured of. “The lack of the Ironstar Mace could mean it was lost. This trip he is on – which he described for us in full while you were just across the table from him even – could have the secondary objective of retrieving it for all we know. That, in turn, could have had him wandering through any region as easily as through this one. Furthermore, dwarves other than the Duergar have not been limited with regards to spellcasting in the manner you describe since the Time of Troubles. Which makes me wonder what else of my lessons besides contemporary history you have not been paying attention to. Especially since you seem willing, nay, eager, to base _monumental and borderline blasphemous assumptions_ on _third-hand accounts_ of legends that occurred _centuries_ ago on _a completely different planet_ from a _completely different crystal sphere and plane_ _from ours_.” Gorion paused for a steadying breath while Imoen processed the lack of ripostes available to her, but in the manner of all great lecturers he wasn’t done quite yet. “Finally, child, speculation aside, all your suspicions are rendered baseless by the simple fact that the Forgesmith never even approached us himself. The only reason he was even here long enough for us to meet face-to-face was a bandit attack that turned him back from his path. And even then Cyrus had to go and conscript him, which you were yourself there for if you remember.”

Imoen sputtered with indignation. “D-don’t you use logic on me! Logic’s all made up anyway and people only end up using it so much because we’re beaten over the head with it while growing up! It’s not actually a fundamental part of our understanding of the universe or anything.”

Gorion laughed darkly, and Cyrus was suddenly struck by how much more _intense_ the fiery red of his Father’s inner misgivings were than they should have been. “Then I suppose you will be relieved to know that there is more than enough of an emotional reason why His Most Righteous Light would think twice about insinuating himself into our midst.”

“Oh really? And what’s that?”

“Because if I ever realised I stood in his company, I do not expect to easily avoid succumbing to my urge to punch him in the face.”

Ajantis took a sharp breath as everyone there looked at the man sharply. And as he silently thanked the fact that Gorion and Imoen both had a Mind Blank on – any potential diviners would otherwise have a lot to say and do about all being said, enemies or not – Cyrus Anwar felt that deep-dwelling, simmering feeling in him grow.

Not unlike every time before, Torrin Ironstar’s spirit had barely flickered at all.

“I prayed to him, you see, for the past twenty years. Each day, every day, for hours.” Gorion looked at Imoen and certainly not him, _or_ the priest. “Almost every hour I invoked him in my mind, every other hour I spoke or whispered a prayer aloud. Asking, pleading, begging, bargaining, offering anything. Everything. Whatever he wanted so long as he did _something_ for my son. But in the end he did exactly as much as every one of the other gods I pled for help from on his behalf, which was _nothing at all_.” The man refused to look anywhere but at his Imoen’s face, now stunned and pale. Even as the one whose god he was insulting stood just two paces away. “For Moradin to make some play _now_ , after Cyrus has been forced to suffer for nigh on two decades _and_ has had to overcome his hardships all on his own… The very idea of it is _galling_.”

Torrin Ironstar’s soul barely sketched a reaction even then.

Taking another breath to master himself, Gorion finally finished. “I hope I have sufficiently conveyed my stance on this matter.”

“Erm… yeah,” Imoen said uncertainly, looking between him and the priest. “I’ll shut up now.”

“Thank you.”

Whatever dismay he’d felt at Imoen’s inadvertent insult of Gorion was small compared to what Cyrus felt now. To think that he’d completely missed this all the years leading up to the slayer confrontation was bad enough, but he seemed to have become even blinder since. Or just… uncaring of anything not actively affecting himself?

He was still a self-absorbed as they came.

Gorion wasn’t.

The man turned to behold the priest and finally spoke to him precisely as directly and bluntly as any dwarf would. “If it were up to me, you would not be traveling with us at all.”

Cyrus almost started, like everyone else there other than Torrin himself.

But Father was still talking. “For all that Imoen is fond of jumping to outrageous conclusions, this time she based them on facts. And for one like you to cross our path after everything I just mentioned does not reek of much less divine conceit than her outlandish fantasy. But it is not up to me, so I can only trust that my son has good reasons for enlisting your help.”

This, the dwarf thought bleakly, was definitely his fault. Gorion had been _far_ more diplomatic before Bhaal inflicted Cyrus on him.

The emotion that had been building all this time seemed to reach some critical point, and the dwarf realized why it didn’t feel heavy or sedate. It was because it _simmered_ , shining hot and effervescent. But he still didn’t know what it was, even as the view of molten, stewing fog and specks of fire played out at the back of his mind.

All of which somehow mounted when Torrin replied. “I see,” the priest said, and his soul flickered not at all.

It felt wrong. It was wrong. All of this was wrong.

How was it wrong?

“A guarantee, then.”

What?

Surprising them all, Torrin Ironstar suddenly turned to face Cyrus fully. Then, to the shock of everyone who knew that those in his position never bent their knee or bowed to even kings, the High Priest of Moradin bent his head as much as he could without losing eye contact, and his right fist came to press over his heart. “I, being of the given name Torrin Ironstar, do solemnly pledge that I will support and defend you, Cyrus Anwar of Candlekeep, against all enemies known and unknown, that I will exhibit true loyalty and allegiance to you and yours, and that I will follow your commands to the full extent allowed by my oaths of conduct and service to my God, for the next five years or unless and until you choose to release me from this pledge.”

The emotion that had been mounting and mounting suddenly exploded at the back of Cyrus’ mind, and he finally recognised it for what it was.

Outrage.

A venerable, wise, kindly elder had just promised to see him through anything and everything and he only felt _outrage_.

Pure, undiluted, indignant outrage.

The world turned red at the edges.

“I have offended you.”

Torrin’s quiet words cut through the haze, but then the truth wouldn’t stay contained. “You get accused of suspicion, you get accused of duplicity, you have yourself and your God insulted to your face, all this after you were practically _drafted_ by a total stranger whose wisdom, experience and capacity for leadership someone like you should rightly expect to be completely substandard, and yet your response is to _make an oath of service_?” His harsh tone grated in his own ears and he felt deeply now the self-recrimination over letting his contented bliss of two days’ past allow him to take such churlish liberties, but no, it wasn’t himself he was angry at. Not here and not now. “You have your honesty, your honour and your good intentions thrown in your face, and your response is to offer more guarantees? Is it not enough how the odds of death disappear for everyone with any amount of decency within twenty paces of you? And it has barely been days since you put your God-given quest on hold at the apparent whim of someone barely on the cusp of adulthood, and you behave as if _you’re_ the one that owes us assurances? _Questionable_ doesn’t even _begin_ to-” Cyrus bit back the rest of what he was going to say and his clenched fists came up in an aborted attempt to ward off the outside world before dropping. Shutting his eyes barely helped contain the rest of his outburst – he didn’t even know what words he would have spat out next – and as the feeling threatened to shake what part of his inner world wasn’t in chaos, Cyrus wondered if everyone else had so _much_ of themselves within to feel emotions with.

“Son-“

Cyrus sharply motioned for silence, then did the first thing that came to mind in his continued attempts to wait his anger out. He took a deep breath, released it, then he brought out and lit his pipe.

Snap fingers to ignite the herbs, inhale the fumes for six seconds, hold them in for two, breathe them out in four, wait another two, repeat. Inhale for six seconds, hold in for two, breathe out in four, wait two more, repeat. Inhale for six, hold in for two, breathe out in four, hold for two, repeat. Inhale-

Cyrus opened his eyes and looked at the bowl of the pipe in blank-faced disbelief. Other than leftover embers and ash, it was empty. After smoking from it on and off for days.

The pipe wasn’t enchanted to be everfull? But then how did it work in all the time since…?

Ah. So it must have been _summoning_ weed, not conjuring it. Summoning from a stash that the pipe would have been attuned to previously. A stash that a certain someone would have full control of, even if his favourite pipe was misplaced.

Elminster Aumar. Determined to rage against the consequences of his own actions as much as he could apparently, even from countries away. It figured that that’s man’s pettiness would kick in when it least suited him, Cyrus thought darkly.

As he upended the pipe and shook it clean, the dwarf did his best not to let this latest irritation further foul his mood-

His free hand shot out.

The last ember stopped mid-fall and the spark went _still_ under his will just before it would have gone out.

He stared at it, shocked out of all anger within the space of one, heavy moment.

Then he turned to Torrin Ironstar – quietly patient nearby even then – reached out to touch him on the chest, then needed just the barest application of magic to swipe aside and conjure right next to him an illusory replica of what his soul looked like.

It took even less to do the same for the ember he’d stilled just before it would have flickered and died.

They looked like thin ice made of orange light, like glass stretched over a shell too wide, both of them almost exactly alike.

He’d been feeling outrage, his own, Gorion’s and even some on the Forgesmith’s own behalf, he now realised. All of it now cooled, settled and dispersed back into his soul as he beheld that startling, dismal sight.

 _This_ was the reason why Torrin Ironstar’s soul was so distant and seemed so stalled. This was why the old priest almost didn’t feel like anything at all. It wasn’t a shield that he’d been looking at, it wasn’t that his flame was missing or beyond his knowing. There just wasn’t enough left to fuel a flame at all. Just one, last, flickering ember spread in a thin film over a history and duty too heavy and too wide.

Cyrus Anwar looked at Torrin Ironstar and saw and felt almost nothing from that shell of glass. He made to speak but the words stuck in his throat and he felt as if the pipe should shatter in his grasp, so tight his grip had gone. Because the only thing left was the one thing that left nothing to be felt at all.

Soul-weariness, empty and stark.

Emotional exhaustion.

Burnout.

He only managed to find his voice on the third try. “Your… your pledge is accepted.”

The Forgesmith’s eyebrows climbed, showing surprise. Surprise that barely changed a pinhead’s worth of light behind his heart. But then he saw the looks Gorion and Imoen gained as the flickering ember next to him finally faded and died, and his soul lit with a real, genuine brightness for the first time. “I am not dying!” Torrin Ironstar balked, aghast.

The emotion barely lasted, but it was long enough for Cyrus to feel it leave just a tiny, infinitesimally bit _less_ behind than there was before.

Something must have shown on his face because Jaheira and Khalid turned grim as well.

“I am not dying!” Torrin insisted again, looking from one person to the next, then on Cyrus with something uncertain in his gaze. “Am I?”

He hadn’t known…

The silence gave the other dwarf all the answer he wanted, and the startled surprise that flashed over the ancient man was the first, clear thing that Cyrus had ever read off him, the first emotion truly matching his expression.

And as it passed, his life burned out by another, tiniest amount.

The flash went away – specks floated and faded upwards towards some far-removed regard – and his soul was back to being the same, sedate, stretched ember it ever was, distant without being far and glowing far too faintly, like the last lump of coal in a nearly cold hearth.

“I see…” the priest said. “If there is nothing else…?”

Cyrus shook his head mutely.

“Very well,” Torrin Ironstar nodded slowly. “I shall be next to yonder boulder, contemplating this new facet of my existence.”

Cyrus watched him leave, feeling dispirited and dismayed as his attempts at being considerate continued to be an abject failure. To say nothing of the unexpected revelation he’d just had.

Sometime later, after some awkward comments that skirted the topic of Cyrus’ increasingly terrible social skills, Imoen took possession of her Mirrorshade Masterwork Meal Manifold and they all finally made a last equipment check and said their goodbyes, Imoen’s particularly subdued and sheepish.

“Son,” Gorion finally asked, having walked over to stand at his side as he watched the four of them disappear southwards. “What are you feeling right now?”

“I…” Many things, but there was one emotion that stood out. “I think I know what mortification feels like.”

“Hmm.”

The three of them, Cyrus, Father and Torrin, finally set out on the North Road after that, with the priest walking ahead by a few yards in order to keep point. Cyrus didn’t begrudge him the need to keep to himself, but he did wish his first adventure, in a manner of speaking, didn’t have to start on such dismal terms.

“So,” his father eventually restarted the conversation all too mildly. “Before you go ahead and finally tell me what you’ve been up to the past couple of days in _exhaustive detail_ , are there any revelations in particular that I should perhaps have some forewarning on? Given your _adventures_ in Baldur’s Gate, I wonder if it isn’t too optimistic to hope that Candlekeep let you escape without complications. Has life finally turned me jaded or are there any _highlights_ in store for me?”

Cyrus pondered the options that lying could provide him with in this scenario – from a purely academic perspective of course – but concluded soon enough that it was still the truth that would serve him best, as it always did.

“A few surprises.” I attended my own wake, confirmed my accidental creation of mutant killer fish, inflicted a sex change on a person two conversations into our acquaintance, and wrestled a naked Thearabho into submission. “But none that could qualify as unpleasant.”


	27. Uplifter

“-.  .-“

Though their ultimate destination was still a few days of travel hence, the trio of one human and two dwarves actually reached Cloakwood Forest just before nightfall on the same day they departed the Friendly Arm. That was in spite of the ankhegs that made the mistake of attacking them while they cut through the farmlands north of the inn. There was still an hours’ worth of daylight they could have used to push onwards, but it was not exactly the optimal solution, especially since they had skipped lunch.

They had skipped lunch because he had been too focused tracing energy pathways into the agate which the good gnome had picked out the day before, at his request. He only realised that an hour and a half after he’d already eaten the ration bar his father had passed him. He was starting to feel like something of an insensitive oaf more and more these days. Worse, unlike Gorion and Torrin who’d had to march almost non-stop for the past eight hours, he’d actually ridden Arawn most of the way.

Arawn. Unintended anagram of his own name aside, it was a name he’d chosen for his wolf _before_ he found out about the Celtic death god who carried that same name, the king of the otherworld realm of Annwn which lay deep in the Shadowfell. The same god incidentally kept dark hounds as favoured servants while doing his part to keep the Rings spinning, which was guiding the souls of the dead to whatever awaited them. It raised dark implications about where the idea for that name came from. Or, more likely, _whom_. Unfortunately, Arawn was an animal, no matter how clever, so it wouldn’t do any good to ask him what else to name him. Didn’t do any good. The dwarf had tried it with the spell to Speak to Animals. Or, well, his own, weave-less alternative.

Now to see if his other, newest psionic contrivance would be as stable and useful.

Psionics had seemingly disappeared after the Time of Troubles, to the point that some “sages” believed they never existed to begin with. Candlekeep was, fortunately, spared that sort of ignorance. Equally fortunately, they had all the texts and expertise anyone could ever have wanted on the topic, as they did on everything else, and most sources agreed on the ultimate nature of the Invisible Art: it was internal power, as opposed to the external art which shaped the power from the Weave.

Until very recently he’d only been using that internal power in order to cut corners while otherwise casting spells like a sorcerer or wizard would. This, though…

This was going to be entirely Weave-independent.

As he finished tracing empyreal pathways through the gemstone with his own soul force, Cyrus Anwar psychically beheld the complex design imbued in the jewel and he saw that it was good.

It turned out that he’d had to invest a lost less of his soul than he’d been prepared to, but he wasn’t going to complain. All that was left was to separate it from the rest of himself and let it settle as its own existence. Maybe not just yet, however. No use in rushing things, especially since Arawn hadn’t returned from his evening hunt.

The dwarf pocketed the gemstone and looked over the camp. Father was sitting against an ash tree and memorising spells so he would do best without being disturbed. A sentiment Torrin seemed to share, seeing as he’d set up a campfire and placed their small travel pot over it to heat up some of the broth that had been packed for them. He’d just finished hanging three food skewers over the flames as well, spiced meat chops mixed with bell pepper strips and the occasional cucumber and cherry tomatoes. The fragrance alone was beyond delicious already.

Bentley Mirroshade had gone above and beyond for them, Cyrus thought fondly. Or perhaps _below_ and beyond, if he’d done as Cyrus suspected and taken a trip to whichever part of Faerun he could access through that portal he had in his second basement.

Mentally checking on the charged gemstone one more time, the younger dwarf walked up to the fire just in time to see Torrin Ironstar produce a foldable seat for himself out of his own bag of holding. It was followed by a tripod with a tall central rod on top of which he affixed a small brass-finished font of some sort. Then came a spinning wheel he positioned just below the font’s cap, and finally a bag of knitting supplies, of all things. Cyrus blinked owlishly at the knitting needles, and then gave the spinning wheel a long look of its own, which only confirmed it: everything that the old dwarf had brought out, other than the seat and (possibly) whatever was inside the font, was made entirely of wolfram metal.

As if the sight was not uncanny already, Torrin also pulled out and opened a case of tiny metal needles of some sort, glinting with a greenish sheen in the firelight now that the sun had finally descended below the treeline. He affixed it to the top of a rectangular frame which was soon revealed to be just part of some sort of odd… loom? No, they were three interlocked warp-weighed looms, only without the warp threads. They were tall enough to reach Torrin’s collarbone once he had them in place around him and settled on the seat he’d brought out earlier. Which meant they just barely fell short of the lip of the font he’d set up earlier. It all looked like a privacy screen or a room divider, only without the privacy on account of the frames being empty of anything.

Anything save for the glow of magic. Shades of transmutation and abjuration mingled equally and filled the space the frame bordered, forming a strangely perfect symmetry with the frames themselves. Each one was clearly the work of a master craftsman, with perfect angles and hinges and knobs aligned at precise distance to each other all along the inner edges, where the warp threads should have been. Small knobs. Tiny, tiny knobs all across the inner top and bottom edges. Cyrus could barely see them, despite the keenness of his eyesight. Only the middle frame lacked them, having just one at the bottom designed to slide along a rail.

The campfire had burned itself to a smoulder, but that was actually perfect for the purposes of keeping the food hot without overcooking it. Clearly not a coincidence.

Cyrus sat where it wouldn’t obstruct the view and watched the High Old One at work.

Torrin Ironstar positioned the suspended font and spinning wheel next to him so that they faced the middle loom frame, surprisingly, rather than any one of the others. Then, after giving the whole setup a last once-over and making sure the case of metal powder was well affixed to the top of the frame, he pulled four knitting needles into his lap from the bag at the foot of his seat. They were long things, each about the length of Torrin’s forearm, and almost half a centimetre thick save for the tip, which was as sharp as anything Cyrus had ever seen.

It was at that point that the old dwarf set the wheel to spin and unscrewed the cap of the font, allowing for pure, molten mithral to trickle forth. Liquid metal of the purest sort, which the dwarf spun into thread as if it was the most natural thing in the world, wheel going round and round with every motion that the pedal made up and down under his foot.

Cyrus Anwar was hard-pressed not to gape.

The old priest spun liquid truesilver into thread so fine that it could barely be seen with the naked eye, then grabbed the end bare-handed as if it wasn’t hotter than the flames of the campfire. Grabbed it so that he could slip it through a fine channel at the top of the frame in front of him, at which point the thread went from hair-thin to about as thick as the knitting needles themselves.

Torrin Ironstar wound the magnified and within a minute he had a white, glimmering sleeve of some sort already done, mithral knitted into a cylinder five centimetres long and three across. Then the bottom of the case of metal flakes shuttered momentarily, letting a single flake fall through the top-most gap of the frame.

The flake grew into a thick rod – it was _adamantine_ – and dropped inside the sleeve, making for a perfect fit that Torrin Ironstar deftly sealed with a knitted runic pattern composed of RIGIDITY and IMPETUS in semi-opposite alignment.

Then the procedure happened again and again and kept going from there, forming an ever growing, thick and gleaming, outwardly uniform cord of what looked like chain links but was actually one, single mithral thread wound through and around itself along the tips of four needles. Each section was impossible to distinguish from the outside, and each completed faster and faster and faster. And when the thread was so long that it almost filled the bottom half of the frame even folded over and over, the lone, middle knob at the bottom snatched the end of the cord and pulled it all the way into the other frame, the one on the left, and the cord changed from five by three centimetres to a thin, fine fibre no thicker than a thread of silk. 

Cyrus blinked in astonishment as the first warp thread of some craft-to-be settled in place in the empty loom. String then became cord and sleeve and warp thread and more and again, needles never missing a loop. And no gap was larger or smaller than the other as mithral grew and wrapped adamantine only for the whole contrivance to compress back to true size like the most natural thing, over and over again.

It was some time before he could find it in him to do anything but watch in fascination as liquid metal became string.

And as he did, Torrin gazed back with eyes like dark fire, shadowy and bright and secretive all at once.

When the silence finally broke, it wasn’t because of either of them. Done with his spell preparation, Gorion took a seat near the fire at last. “I dare say I will never look at socks the same way again.”

Cyrus almost missed the momentary change in the other dwarf’s flickering ember of a soul, but it was there, however briefly. But he agreed with his father on this one. Never would he have imagined that this technique could be used for something like this. Four-needle knitting was used to make sleeves and _socks_ out of yarn, not this!

“There is only so much that can be done with traditional forging.” Torrin Ironstar told them as he worked. “And I mastered that and all auxiliary arts long ago.” He was working with his eyes _closed_ now, but only seemed to knit and wrap and weave faster and faster and faster with each stroke.

Back when he was a child, it had taken Cyrus years to reach the point where he could reliably read Imoen. Years before his second sight became clear and precise enough to detect the nuances of light in absence of the shadows present in everyone else alive. In a way, Torrin posed a similar challenge in that he couldn’t tell what the old dwarf was feeling at all, even when he could tell there was _something.._.

“Will you not be joining us?’ Gorion asked as he gave Cyrus a bowl of soup.

“I will only be a minute,” Torrin said.

But no, Torrin wasn’t like Imoen at all. More like in reverse: where she was too bright, Torrin Ironstar was so dim and distant without being far that he may as well feel nothing for all the effect it had on his inner light, such as it was. And when that ember did flicker, Cyrus’ existing frame of reference didn’t avail him even the slightest bit.

It turned out the old dwarf really only needed a minute. Precisely. Time in which he steadily removed one, then two then all four of the knitting needles even as the wheel kept spinning even after his foot left the pedal, while knitting and weaving continued all on its own. Torrin Ironstar then carefully rose and emerged from behind the contraption to take his place at the fire right across from Cyrus himself.

“Some sort of pattern-replicating enchantment?” Gorion mused as he passed the dwarf his food. “Capable of recording a certain process and then duplicating it independently?”

“Yes, though I am still keeping some of my attention on it. While I could leave it be entirely, there is a limit to the level of precision that an enchanted object can reproduce in absence of fine gears and mechanisms, and the Weavesmelter is primarily meant to channel my own expertise in any case.”

Cyrus might have said or thought something about that, but it just so happened that he took the first spoonful of soup just then.

As usual, the sensation of taste instilled an emotion well beyond appreciation, but this time he didn’t get overwhelmed by it. Though it was still intense in its newness, the emotional appreciation stayed within the bounds of reasonable, however barely. It allowed him to make the connection that had been dancing just out of reach since waking up the morning after he stabbed Bhaal to death and set him on fire.

“Solipsism!” he exclaimed.

There was an awkward silence.

“Apologies,” Cyrus cleared his throat and took another spoonful, managing to stay aware of his surroundings with barely any effort this time. “I just figured out why I became distracted during previous meals.”

“Your soul is experiencing new tastes for the first time, but since you tasted similar things so many times in the past without actually _experiencing_ the associated emotions, every time you taste something new it now prompts you to mentally relive each and every memory of a similar meal in order to complete each of those experiences.”

Cyrus did gape this time.

“Come now, son,” Gorion said drily, as if the truth he’d just spoken wasn’t entirely owed to a blatant leap of logic. “What else could it have been?”

This time, Cyrus Anwar had no trouble guessing what Torrin Ironstar felt on the inside.

“-.  .-“

Once dinner was done and the others went to prepare for the night, or in Torrin’s case resumed Weavesmelting since he had first watch, Arawn finally came back from his wanderings.

Time to do what he had been preparing for since that morning.

Cyrus Anwar finally separated the fragment of his soul in the gem from the rest of himself. It did not cause him any vertigo, in no small part due to how much more _him_ existed compared to just days before. He didn’t even feel lessened, which boded well for his other, actually vital short-term plan. He’d been certain he had sufficient… resources for both, but confirmation was always good to have.

The shift in mood behind him made it clear that Gorion and Torrin had both realised something was about to happen. The low level of curiosity compared to understated anticipation (once he looked past the long-term loving concern Gorion always felt no matter what was happening) made it obvious that both man and dwarf had figured out what he’d been working towards all day. Not surprising.

There were not many spells or rituals that needed one to spend hours and hours embedding part of their soul into a gemstone.

Really, the only surprising thing was that it only took him eight hours to make the soul stone. Lore he’d studies and Khelben’s own spellbook indicated the preparation time would need to be of around a whole day. Cyrus was aware that his sense of time sped ahead of the rest of the world the more focused he became throughout the day, but he doubted that was the explanation. More likely Mystra’s death during Time of Troubles was the root cause of the change, as all magic had changed in a manner or other that year, especially since psionic powers like his were supposed to be gone. Whatever Vecna did in Sigil that shook the Planes not long afterwards probably contributed to everything as well.

Cyrus wondered if that could be called Ao’s fault. Since all gods even tangentially connected to Toril were ripped out of their Planar Dominions and forced to descend, it wasn’t beyond the realm of credulity that the absence of divine oversight and surveillance on other worlds during that year was the reason Vecna escaped his imprisonment and went about his megalomaniacal plans unnoticed. It was also beyond implausible that a mere Lich, however powerful, could have gained the upper hand against the gods and almost unmade the Multiverse without any sort of divine backing of his own whatsoever.

But he was going on a tangent again and even his unreasonably loyal wolf was looking at him expectantly now.

Cyrus walked to him and found himself capable of looking the wolf right in the eye, as Arawn was about the size of a pony since Elminster’s Wishing spree. Not for the first time, the dwarf wondered how much power Mystra really had that she could allow all her chosen to use that powerful ability without them needing to burn part of their soul as fuel every time. He wasn’t going to complain being arguably the biggest beneficiary of that particular privilege in history, but it was definitely something to ponder.

Not right now though.

This moment was for his faithful companion who never forsook him even after he left him broken against a tree upon succumbing to Bhaal’s dark urges.

With both hands he laid the soul stone on Arawn’s brow. And as he did, he reached inwards for the ritual circle he’d designed and superimposed it upon the outer world. It settled outwards and painted the world in shining rings and patterns written out of light.

“Hear this, creature of base instinct, hear and see and **understand**. My mind decides, my Spirit bestows, my voice commands:  **Now You Are the Voice, Now You Are the Light, Now You Are the Architect of Your Own Life. Hence You Shall Eat to Fuel Your Body, Not to Satisfy Your Appetite. Hence You Shall Know Life for the Gift It Is, that You May Enjoy It Fully. Hence You Shall Learn From Every New Experience, that You May Know and Understand that the Past Does Not Equal the Future.** **At Last the Past is the Past. You Have Broken Free and Won, for You Are** **a Radiant Being of Wholesome Light and All You Need is Within You.”**

The gemstone shattered to dust and the soulspark within sunk into the animal’s Animus, the motive force that drove all living things. And where there was nothing but the chains of rearing and obedience to keep in check the instincts of the Wild, there was suddenly a great and vivid flash of light as that fragment of a soul ignited with the force of a sun. It was visible for all to see, like a star at the core of the ritual sphere of empyreal patterns that enclosed the both of them.

Soul flare and ritual faded at the same time.

And when they were gone, Arawn stared at Cyrus like he could see him for the first time.

Then he backed off, turned around and ran off into the trees, disappearing into the night.

Cyrus Anwar gazed unblinkingly after the colourful, chaotic mess of feelings and soul sensations until it completely disappeared from even his second sight.

“-.  .-“

“I am not angry or surprised,” Cyrus pre-empted his Father before he could get a word out as he unfurled their respective bedrolls. “I knew that was likely to happen when I decided not to include the part meant to compel him into a positive disposition towards me.”

“Depressed then.”

“No. Sad and disappointed, but I can hardly blame him after what happened just a few nights ago.”

“Does that mean you do not want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Good. Let’s go over things. The night is young enough.”

As was generally the case when his Father was involved, talking through his actions and feelings actually did help. It felt like a release and provided him with perspective and even better clarity, despite how he expected that to be impossible for someone with as good a memory and self-awareness as him. The conclusion was never in doubt, however, and his father summed it up nicely.

“You really could have chosen a better place and time, and perhaps some more thorough preparation.”

Except that wasn’t actually true. Not for what he _really_ needed to see done as soon as possible. Something that was guaranteed to leave him with too little power to do the Awakening ritual after. At least for a while, barring extreme measures. The Awakening had also served as practice, as callous as it sounded.

Gorion frowned at his silence. “There is something else on your mind.”

“I have managed to create a Weave-independent alternative to the Mind Blank spell.” The only issue had been power, which was why he rushed to Candlekeep to reclaim and assimilate the Bhaaltaint. “I… need you to let me apply it to you.”

The choice of words predictably did not escape his Father, but the man did not reply immediately, let alone agree.

Need. Not wish or like or want. _Need_.

“You have something to tell me,” Father said slowly. “Something which you think Mind Blank is not up to safeguarding.”

Cyrus couldn’t begrudge his father’s disbelief, however repressed. The entire purpose of the spell was to guard against all manner of mind-affecting and divinatory effects. Including all devices and spells that detect, influence, or read emotions or thoughts. For him to say he _mistrusted_ it, even in a roundabout way carried severe implications.

“I think you had best go ahead and do what you need to do,” Gorion said carefully, studying him.

Cyrus was taken aback at his swift compliance.

“I am too curious for my own good and have already gone through half a dozen potential reasons why you think there could even be a need for something superior to the best known mind-protection spell. But if any of them are even remotely on target, I doubt it a good idea to contemplate it too much lest I guess too closely.”

“I must be lacking perspective still, to continue not understanding why you acceded to my wishes so easily.” But he reached to place his hands on his father’s temples anyway. “Why you seem to have stepped back and let me make all the decisions since Khelben and Elminster left.”

“This is your path, not mine.”

“Inaccurate, and you told me repeatedly not to trust absolute statements.”

“A personal opinion then,” Gorion said. “You have quite decisively claimed your life for your own. I expect it will be some time before I manage the ‘letting go’ part of parenthood, but I hope I can at least tell when to stay out of your way in the meanwhile.”

“I hope that doesn’t mean you will keep aside and quiet when my conduct is substandard.” Reach inwards and channel...

“Of course, provided that I actually get to be present.”

The implied rebuke hit home well, though fortunately it did not disrupt what Cyrus had been preparing to do.

Having invested as much as Gorion could take of his empyreal presence, Cyrus tugged at the both of them and _wrenched_ the planar boundaries as abruptly as he could manage while working at the greatest perceptual acceleration he could muster. 

The next instant they were standing on a round platform made of diamond, platform which floated at the core of a gimbal suspended at the centre of his astral inner world. A perfect replica of the memory of a gift he made on a whim for a gnome now so far away. It was the lone air bubble in the midst of liquid fog coloured all shades of fire. The Dagger of Bone hovered above a plinth just behind him, while Khelben’s Spellbook and other objects he’d reproduced all floated languidly through the air above him, each in gimbals of their own, single-ringed and shining faintly with both their own and reflected light.

Before him, Gorion stood and looked around curiously. “I suppose you did not _really_ say you would immediately be casting whatever alternative to Mind Blank you claim to have devised.”

“No.”

“This is Astral Projection.”

“Relatively speaking.” This was his Astral Demiplane but the contents were also technically his spirit, or at least the part of it he hadn’t… done anything with yet.

Gorion looked around, eyes intent on the colours of the flows and eddies roiling beyond the outmost rings bordering that lone spot of peace at the core of the churning ocean of unsettled Spirit. “There is a lot of yellow.”

“Yes.”

It was the first time Gorion saw Cyrus as Cyrus saw others, if from inside out rather than the reverse. But Father was so familiar with the terms he used and their meanings that he deduced what they represented immediately. “You are frightened.”

“Yes.” If there hadn’t been so much of it available for him to compartmentalise and use, he might even have said he was scared out of his _mind_.

“I hoped it was just newfound confidence, but you committed too many oversights since the morning after, even some of which you yourself had condemned mere days prior.”

So he’d suspected already, Cyrus thought. Not surprising. Everything between his first flight and the child murderer _had_ been confidence, but what came after…

Turning reactionary in his dealings with the Dukes, stepping back to let another plan and lead the attack on the doppelgangers, rushing to Candlekeep for the essence without consulting or at least letting his father know ahead of time. Not to mention his blatant disregard of Cyric’s prerogative as a God just to push the boundaries of… whatever was happening that left his continued existence on a knife’s edge.

None of those were the actions of a man unafraid.

Gorion took a deep, slow breath. His soul painted a vivid, firm image against the backdrop of Cyrus’ own, churning maelstrom. “What are we hiding from?”

“All beings and forces of the Planes,” Cyrus answered. “Even the Gods, I think. I hope.” He _doubted_ it, but at this point he could only do his best and _hope_ for the best.

Gorion met his gaze and held it. “Suddenly I don’t think I am mentally or emotionally prepared for whatever you’re about to tell me.”

Some of Gorion’s own words rung through Cyrus’ mind _. Sometimes you have to go at things from the other end in order to make sure you make something that lasts. Build the buttresses before the dam, so to speak._ It was from when he and Khelben tried to teach him to embed concepts into his enchantments before he actually funnelled power into them. It still ended in failure of course. Which was to say, his failures only became very specific in how they murdered anyone foolish enough to touch them, like the Club of Skull Bashing, as opposed to the randomly indiscriminate nature of their traits up to that point.

Still… “Now that we’re here, there are some other assurances I would like to put in place.”

Gorion’s gaze turned sharp. “Why does that sound like prevarication?”

“It isn’t.” And it wasn’t. “It will also provide you with some perspective.”

“Oh?”

“I mean if I told you the measures I hope you will allow me to take.”

His Father frowned suspiciously. “This is where I find out that just the _one_ superior alternative to an Eight Circle spell isn’t enough of an overachievement, isn’t it?”

“... Arguably, it _can_ qualify as just the one spell.”

“But…?”

“But I need it to protect the soul _and_ the body, I need it to be anchored in you rather than an object that could be lost, and I need it to last indefinitely and resist dispelling, or at least reassert itself if suppressed.”

There was a long silence as the whirls of colour flamed and wreathed beyond the borders of that drop of permanency.

“Somehow I do not think that ‘Permanency’ is the only auxiliary effect you have planned here.” Gorion’s hard mien changed broke with a sigh. “Son. Tell me, in the most complete yet concise manner you are able to devise, what exactly you’ve been preparing to do to me.”

“I will elevate my mind to a state of meta-universal consciousness, temporarily meld the two of us on all levels of our existential strata, use the resulting awareness to heal any and all imperfections I can find, then improve on that foundation and use is as a basis to add the best protections and veils of concealment I can devise to your body, soul, spirit and mind.”

His summation was immediately followed by the longest break Cyrus had ever experienced when talking to his Father without it marking an end to the conversation.

It felt rather disquieting.

Gorion stared down at him, stone-faced. “Son… are you a god?”

“No.”

“Because what you’re describing sounds suspiciously similar to a Divine Empowerment.”

“Prolonged proximity and familiarity have given me insight into the _effects_ of Khelben’s blessings from Mystra, but much of the actual process I intend to carry out is based on metamagical principles and those of Artefact Creation.”

“And he says it as if that’s not something beyond the ken of all but two or three mortals on Faerun to even start figuring out,” Gorion muttered. “Son, I’ll ask again,” Gorion said tightly. “Are you a god?”

“No.”

“So what you are saying…” Gorion enunciated syllable by syllable. “Is that you plan to _burn most of your soul as fuel_ in order to replicate a Divine Empowerment on someone else.”

“No.” And it wasn’t. “I mean to _transfer_ it, which means infusing your soul and body with…” he gestured to the soulfire ocean.

“… How much?”

“Most,” Cyrus admitted.

Gorion took a deep breath and reached up to pinch his nosebridge. Then he switched to rubbing his temple, eyes shut in dismay.

“It needs to be a _wholly inherent_ part of you,” Cyrus added when Father’s silence got too heavy.

“This is all my fault,” Father moaned in dismay. “Son, when I told you, so very recently, not to follow my example, it was precisely so you could avoid this sort of self-forgetting, disproportionate magnanimity!”

Cyrus Anwar gave his father the look of abject disbelief only such an absurd statement could have warranted.

He had never before felt so natural.

“Don’t you give me that look,” Gorion groused, crossing his arms. “Do you even realise what you’re asking?”

“Yes.”

Gorion returned his earlier look a hundredfold, but Cyrus had something that made it toothless. He had what he needed.

He had the truth. “It’s not magnanimity.”

Gorion made as if to speak but decided against it, instead gazing down at his son.

“I’m not mainly asking this for you.” He met his Father’s eyes squarely. “I’m asking for me.”

“… I think we should have that talk you wanted before we discuss _this_ insanity any further.”

The ocean of fire churned with the currents of jagged/rust/frustration as the master of that place rubbed his face in mounting stress. What was he supposed to say that he hadn’t already? The option to tell him and leave everything else to be decided later certainly existed, since bringing him here for that was literally the safest option Cyrus had. But now, on the cusp of the revelation, the dwarf wasn’t willing to tell Gorion and risk the man subsequently demand to have his memory wiped or something similarly unfair or convoluted.

So he couldn’t risk Gorion _or_ himself by sharing the relevant facts before he took measures, but he couldn’t take measures without risking Gorion and himself by sharing any of the relevant facts before taking measures.

What was he even supposed to do in this situation?

He felt like cursing.

But of course, he did nothing of that. Instead, Cyrus looked at the man and tried to recall anything that would work in absence of the so, so dangerous alternative.

Strangely, it wasn’t anything Gorion had ever said that ultimately came to him. Or Khelben, or Imoen, or anyone else Cyrus had ever talked to. Just as Cyrus was beginning to contemplate the merits of cursing whoever and whatever had put him in his predicament, something his _mother_ once said came to him, something of what she told Gorion from before her premature end. His memories of then were vague compared to normal, but that only meant they were about as accurate as what passed for normal memory for everybody else. Something about how Gorion tended to overthink things, and that there were times when things were better left to the heart. About how explanations should sometimes be eschewed or delayed in favour of more gentle options. Like fables.

Or metaphors.

“I…”

 _You should light a candle_....

“I want to light a candle.”

_You should light a candle, rather than curse the darkness._

“Oh son…” The energy seemed to drain out of the man all at once, both his posture and expression sagging and falling, somehow. The use of metaphors had been Vala Orothiar’s favoured tool of speech, but that particular metaphor was Gorion’s own creation. One he’d come up with in the aftermath of her death and Cyrus’ kidnapping, as a way to cope with his loss and growing despair over his perceived failure to be what Cyrus needed.

Cyrus wondered how much of a part it played in his Father’s decision to embrace Imoen’s appearance and role in their lives, rather than feeling resentment over her being able to reach Cyrus in all the ways he never could. She certainly shone bright in the darkness.

Unlike Cyrus himself, who was only ever the darkness, not the candle.

Gorion sighed one last time, and though he looked dismayed he was equally resigned, both inside and out. “Alright. No, not alright, but… If this is what you think you need to do.”

“It is.” _I need help._

“Then you have my permission.” _I’m here for you, son, always._

Cyrus wondered if he there would ever come a time when he wouldn’t have to take his father for granted like this.

Gorion passed his hand through his hair and took a deep breath, though he wasn’t worried for himself at all even then, as usual. “Do you need me to do anything? Talk me through it?”

“No,” Cyrus steeled himself as he reconnected their disparate bodies and awareness of that place with their presence in the Prime Material Plane. They’d both have to be fully settled into their bodies for this. “You just need to allow it and never waver from that decision.”

He needed his father to trust him, basically.

It really should have been a tougher stone to hew than it ultimately was, but Gorion had always been too selfless by half.

From an outside perspective, it was just three minutes before human and dwarf opened their eyes. Contrary to how these things usually went, there was no great and terrible flash of light or glowing currents over their bodies or roaring sound or whatever else. Not to normal sight, and while there was no telling what Torrin had seen, if anything, the dwarf was still on the other side of the camp, going about his work. Cyrus wouldn’t have been able to catch any difference in his self-haze in any case, such as it was.

What was also contrary to expectations was Gorion’s way of dealing with the unavoidable.

The man grabbed his bedroll and dragged it closer. “Budge over.”

Cyrus blinked

“Come now, son, you need proximity and physical contact, don’t you? _Obviously_ , you’ll be sleeping with me tonight.”

Fair enough.

The dwarf obliged, letting his father spread his bedroll fully while keeping his own as a covering for both of them.

“Right then,” Gorion said lowly as he tucked Cyrus under his chin as if it was the most natural thing. “Whenever you’re ready, do what you have to do.”

He did, and the night wore on.

“-.  .-“

When it was all over near dawn break – Torrin had apparently been too considerate to disturb them for their turns at the watch – Cyrus settled back into his body and experienced the bizarre dichotomy of feeling at once greatly lessened as well as greatly triumphant. Feeling inward, he tried to determine what uses he could get out of what power he still had.

Hmm. Spells and powers up to Fifth Circle, if just barely. All in all, still a net gain compared to the day before.

Then he saw Gorion blink blearily at him before seemingly falling asleep.

He projected himself into his mindspace/demiplane/inner world just in time to see Gorion come aware inside his newly assigned space, a platform enclosed in nine orthogonally pivoted rings, forming themselves a multi-layered sphere. Three of Gorion’s own control within three equally shared protective and sustainment wards within three under Cyrus’ own mastery, that they both might be able to move it and remove it from the Demiplane entirely, if the need ever came for it.

The man carefully stepped out into the Demiplane proper and looked back at the setup, experimenting with his control over its positioning, before turning to behold Cyrus. “’Improve on that foundation’ was it?”

“Yes.”

“Alright,” Gorion sighed. “Let’s say that ownership of a fragment of this place really was the only way you could come up with to provide maximum concealment and protection while still allowing for a telepathic bond between us. The whole point of this whole thing is to enable safe communication, so I can accept this. Easily. Welcome it even.”

Cyrus stood silent.

“And I suppose that making my astral projection permanent even while I’m awake in the Prime Material has a purpose as well.”

“It is designed to always be whole and hale, which provides obvious benefits due to the protean connection to your own body.”

The older man digested that.

“So…” Gorion finally mused thoughtfully. “I regenerate now.”

“Yes.”

The man blinked and frowned in disbelief, looking down at himself. “Why did no one ever come up with this solution?”

“Deliberate mass brainwashing by the Goddess of Magic.”

Gorion looked at him sharply.

“Time Conduit,” Cyrus said stubbornly.

The Sage of Candlekeep pinched his nosebridge, unwilling to get into a debate over _that_ again. “And the rest of it? Don’t make me point out that you _did_ burn your soul as fuel, even if not technically the share of it you passed to me.”

“That was payment for the Wish to restore you to your physical prime.”

Gorion opened his mouth, then closed it and looked at him in something not dissimilar to shock.

Cyrus wondered how close and constant the scrutiny was on him by whoever was concealing his more overt supernatural acts. As far as such things went, Wishing was the most blatant alteration of reality there was in this day and age, let alone wishing for youth. But his odds of death had not changed at any point that night.

“Alright,” Gorion said eventually. “I suppose that would have occurred to me at some point and is not, technically, outside my own means, although I expect even a Wish spell would need some gemstones and valuable magical reagents to properly bestow that effect when cast conventionally.”

Except that humans lived so much shorter lives than dwarves, even without accounting for Gorion’s advanced age, that it wasn’t something Cyrus was willing to wait for or chance on.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “And still, somehow I get the feeling that was not the full scope of things. Unless you would have me think you did not, in fact, overdo things as you usually do?”

“Khelben Arunsun lived under a Mythal for a time, which rendered him ageless. It was something that stood out to me since the moment I first laid eyes on him. And while killing may be straightforward enough, my second sight was never less than obsessive in ferreting every possible way to bring death about. That includes, it turns out, understanding the ins and outs of anything that prevents the natural end of things from coming about, so as to best pick it apart.” This was possibly going to be the most contentious part, but Cyrus met his father’s eyes unflinchingly. “I knew how to reproduce the effect by the time I was twelve.”

“-.  .-“

Predictably, the next while consisted of Gorion demanding _clarifications,_ which in turn meant that Cyrus had to provide information and _confirmations_ on a not inconsiderable number of matters. Cyrus’ ability to explain things in proper vernacular got a serious amount of practice as a result, though some of the revelations and explanations did a fair job in stretching even Gorion’s credulity.

Yes, Khelben and Elminster somehow got false readings when they tried to scan him. Yes they were wrong in every one of their conclusions, including the one that he was under permanent Mind Blank now. Yes, Cyrus knew what was really going on with him all along.

Yes, he had deliberately refrained from volunteering information or otherwise kept silent on many relevant matters in order to avoid becoming a liar.

No he did not know what was going on with everything _outside_ himself that almost got him wiped out of existence the moment he slew Bhaal’s leftover mind and abjured every other god that is and ever was. No he had no idea why that didn’t follow him into the Prime Material until he went cavorting in Baldur’s Gate at night. No he did not know who or what it was that had since been concealing him or otherwise preventing that. No, he had no idea where to even start figuring out how to gain insight into that.

No, he did not think he could reproduce what he just did for Imoen even if he did have the power, which he did not. She was too free-spirited and self-reliant for that, more self-reliant than she was ready to rely on someone else for something meant to become such an intrinsic part of her being.

Yes, Gorion shouldn’t be too shocked if she somehow stumbled on her own into immortality in the most implausible fashion not yet devised.

Yes Cyrus had already invested a comparable amount of himself into himself, so he could halt his own ageing whenever he liked.

“You mean you haven’t?” Father asked, surprised.

“No.”

“ _Why?_ ”

“I want to grow into my beard a bit first.”

Gorion burst into laughter.

Cyrus hadn’t even intended for that, but it did his Father a world of good and the liberating effect was a wonder to see unfold.

When the laughter expended itself, Gorion sighed gustily, and for once in his life his soul painted the colours of worry for his son without the miasma of despair anywhere in sight. “Oh son, will the Universe ever leave you be?”

They both returned to the physical world soon after, to find Torrin Ironstar almost done preparing breakfast.

And his wolf was on his belly next to their shared bedroll, waiting quietly.

Cyrus’ heart leapt.

The dwarf sat up and studied the wolf outside and in. He had no idea what to say. The wolf’s newborn soul was fully aglow, emotions as full and wholesome as those of any sapient. They were also settled in that way which implied someone was fully comfortable in their own skin, which was not as common as some might expect.

Fortunately, the idyosincracies of small talk had been perfected long ago, and stating the obvious was a tried and true method for sparking a reaction. “You’ve come back.”

“Yes.” The wolf’s voice had a gravelly, low pitch.

It suited him well. “I’m glad.”

The wolf’s self-light of guarded caution changed in colour to that iridescent pink/not-pink/royal purple Cyrus hoped he would never again become unable to appreciate.

“But you ran away,” Gorion cut in from where he’d sat up to comb his hair.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The wolf glanced between them two and then proved that he had inherited Cyrus’ penchant for verbal inference. “The last experience embedded into the soul was also the one that first asserted itself upon the ritual’s completion.”

_Solipsism!_

_Come now, son, what else could it have been?_

Cyrus eyed his four-legged companion. If the first thing the wolf did upon Awakening was lay eyes on Cyrus, and if that meant his life started with an episode where he retroactively re-experienced every memory similar to that in a single flash...

“Ah,” the dwarf said shortly. “I am sorry.”

“Do not be,” the wolf replied immediately. “I doubt my self-awareness would have advanced and settled so neatly and so quickly otherwise.”

“I ran your mother off.”

“No, she ran off like a prey animal and left me behind as appeasement.”

Cyrus blinked in surprise at the frank affirmation. It was utterly lacking in resentment or any feeling at all. Or perhaps any leftover emotion was insufficient to make itself seen through the glow of his soul as it felt towards him now.

“The experience was still unpleasant,” Cyrus insisted.

“Self-aware life is complex,” the wolf replied as he sat up on his haunches.

Fortunately, Cyrus now had an option he didn’t previously have.

He had communication. “And how do you feel about this?”

“Grateful.”

Despite his hopes that still threw him. “Grateful?”

“Yes,” the wolf met his eyes straight-on. “Father.”

The world turned bright at the edges and his insides felt like they would flip, for a moment.

Then Cyrus Anwar rose to his feet, moved forward and hugged the wolf in front of him. And while he didn’t feel choked up, exactly, he still figured it was a good idea not to try and say anything for a while.

Unfortunately, as was par for the course, life did not see fit to agree.

“I want a new name,” the sapient beast grunted as he rested his head across his shoulder.

“Sure,” Cyrus said thickly. “Any one you want.”

“Also, some lunatic shot arrows at me from up in the trees a few miles into the woods. Someone should probably look into that.”


	28. The Perils of Elitism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I live! Flesh and blood and bone, I am alive! Hahahaha-oh wait, wrong line.
> 
> Hello! The massive initial momentum finally settled into something more sane so I'm not entirely focused on "On the Shoulders of Scions" anymore.
> 
> Now that I have shown myself to be the soul of wit, have my latest example of my eternal feud with brevity.

“-. 10 Mirtul, 1368 DR .-“

“I would like it known that I reserve the right to abscond into the shadows at any time,” the now nameless wolf said a couple of miles into their unenthusiastic walk through the woods. “While I am sure the attempted murder against my person can be attributed to extenuating circumstances of the ‘did not know I was a sapient being’ variety, I am not about to intentionally set myself up to be killed by meeting new people.”

Cyrus rubbed his son’s head consolingly as he walked alongside him.

It was his father who replied though. Huffily at that. He was still rather offput by the… lapse in courtesy that the wolf had exhibited during breakfast when his irritation at his almost killer had bubbled over. “It does _not_ kill you to meet new people.”

“I beg to differ,” the wolf snorted. “It most certainly _can_ kill you to meet new people. They could be murderers, they could be carrying diseases, they could be cursed to spread bad luck to all they come into contact with, they might be too stupid to live, why, they may even be so stupid as to cause harm to themselves, others and the surrounding area just by existing, and did I mention that they could be murderers?” The animal shouldered aside a fir branch so that Cyrus would have an unobstructed path forward. “Because I assure you, I speak from experience. Just in case it had slipped your mind, Grandfather. I understand that tends to come with age.”

Cyrus lightly knocked him on the brow, frowning.

The wolf’s posture hunched slightly as they walked. “I suppose this admonishment means I have stepped well into the realm of offense?”

“Completely,” Gorion said dryly.

“It seems I’ve not properly grasped humour. I apologise.”

“Forgiven. Now if only you had chosen to take after your father in something _other_ than trying to imitate Imoen, I would be a truly happy man.” 

Cyrus frowned at the reply. He knew it was just a figure of speech but he could not recall a time when his father was happier than he was now.

“I suppose that is fair enough,” the pony-sized wolf grunted, remaining as oblivious to Cyrus’s inner thoughts and feelings as everyone else as he looked up at the human. “Do you have any guidance on what personality traits I should work on instead?”

Cyrus frowned, wondering what it said about him that a being given sapience by a part of his soul would lead to such a mindset. Cyrus also wondered what life would be like if everyone knew everyone else the way he always did.

Gorion looked between the two of them pensively. “The ‘Gorion knows best’ belief seems to have transferred perfectly fine,” he said, sounding far more jocular than he was inside. “I believe I would do more harm than good to encourage that as things stand.”

“Why?” the wolf asked with earnest curiosity. “Your skill and experience in emotional manipulation are unrivalled.”

The green-nettled shadow that left Gorion staring in mortification proved beyond doubt that the “Gorion knows best” mentality was not the only one of Cyrus’ traits that had perfectly transferred to his son.

“I have said something wrong again,” the wolf muttered, looking uncertainly from Gorion to Cyrus and back. “Was it my wording? I only meant to reference the definition of parenting.”

“The definition of parenting?” Gorion echoed faintly.

“Yes…” the wolf glanced warily up at the human again. “Since parenting is defined as emotionally manipulating your children so they do not grow up to be savages, convicts or corpses, I thought-“

Gorion’s groan of exasperation brought all of them to a halt and prompted stares as the man sunk his face in both hands. “Next time Elminster buys his way into Candlekeep with a tome of Terran ‘sayings’ I will toss him off the parapets! Repeatedly!”

“That is _not_ an accurate definition of parenting,” Cyrus hastily told his 8 hours-old wolfine son while trying not to reel from the bizarre experience of being the one in the position of damage control for once in his life. “I had no emotions to manipulate, or much of any emotion to speak of, but Father still brought me up somehow.”

More or less at any rate. Cyrus was starting to understand that if he had _truly_ been bereft of emotion all his life, he wouldn’t have had the capacity to do anything that wasn’t an automatic bodily function. Which included mustering enough will to obey his father’s directions, or even more conventional things like getting out of bed in the morning.

“Ah,” the wolf said. “That makes sense.”

They set off again after that, though wolf son was visibly more morose and he told them so. “I’d hoped I would not start out _quite_ as in need of cognitive supervision as a child of my age rightly should.”

“Child of your age?” Cyrus echoed in confusion.

“Yes?” the wolf said, once again unsure. “I am barely eight hours old, Father.”

Gorion hummed.

Cyrus almost did what Gorion really felt like doing, which was sigh in vexation. If this was just a fraction of what _he_ put Gorion through, he owed his Father an apology. Well, more of an apology. And a year’s worth of living like royalty. Maybe even a decade’s worth of vacationing on a paradise island somewhere just to be doubly sure.

“Spiritually and cognitively you’re right, I know,” Cyrus eventually told his wolf. “I’m surprised _you_ do. Then again maybe I shouldn’t be, considering how well you assimilated common sense, not to mention the capacity for speech.” In two different languages no less.

“A bit too well actually,” Torrin unexpectedly contributed to the conversation after having quietly marched in their wake since breakfast. His hands kept knitting molten metals as the Weavesmelter floated around and behind him in sections, held aloft by floating disks made of granite. “He has adopted everything good _and_ bad from you when it comes to speech. While your Common is a fair fallhammer, you are a bit too much of a shortbeard for your own good at the native tongue of us Stout Folk. It will be a problem if you ever intend to use it with others of our kin. I beg your forgiveness for saying this so bluntly, but listening to your conversation these past few hours has been a blazing proper ogurkh.”

“Is that so?” Cyrus asked, the tangent enough to distract him from the baffled light still radiating from his silent father, who’d been as much a part of their conversation in Dwarvish as everyone else since that morning. “How do you mean?”

“You have light skin tone, blue eyes and long light brown hair, making your Shield Dwarven lineage indisputable. This even disregarding that you are taller than any shield dwarf I have ever seen, who themselves are half a foot taller on average than all other Stout Folk in this world. Yet your Dwarvish consists primarily of Riftspeak, which should not be possible unless you hailed from the Great Rift or are of Gold Dwarf lineage, but you obviously are not. It is not _impossible_ that you could hail from a Shield Dwarven clan and were brought up in the Great Rift for whatever reason, as this is not entirely unheard of in The Firecaverns and would neatly sidestep the issue of _Gold_ Dwarves almost never leaving the bounds of the Kingdom. But you do not always use words within the proper context and your grammar is not entirely consistent, instead reflecting wording, conjugation and declension conventions of other languages, Common being chief among them.”

Cyrus opened his mouth, then closed it not knowing what to say.

The longbeard let his knitting needles continue their job independently and levelled a sharp gaze at him. “Based on this alone I can tell that you were not raised learning Dwarvish, and indeed were not brought up by Gold Dwarves or Shield Dwarves or any dwarves at all. Instead you had the language taught to you _instructionally_ from a non-dwarven source not familiar with all the nuances of the tongue. This would not have come to pass in a conventional dwarven upbringing, so already your manner of speech makes it clear that not only are you Clanless, but your teacher or teachers were misinformed, ogurkhs that disregarded the dialect that would have been more useful for whatever reason, or simply not confident enough in their grasp of Shanatan – if any – to teach it to you as well as they would this. Whichever the case, that you were taught Riftspeak instead of Shanatan means that an external factor was involved in the _choice_ of dialect on the part of your teacher, one considered weightier that the fact that you live in the _West_ of Faerun, where Shanatan is the primary Dwarven dialect for thousands of miles in every direction. The only ‘external factor’ that comes to mind is the language primer written by High Princess Royal Rathauna Forgesilver of the Firecaverns. No material good enough to serve as instructional aide for those outside our people _ever_ made its way out of the Great Rift prior to 1333 DR, when just two volumes were allowed to leave the Deep Realm’s bounds. One went along with the Dwarven Ambassador to Chondath, and the other was reluctantly relinquished in exchange for the now wildly popular account of the Azer, traded by a certain wandering scholar and linguist from Candlekeep called Larth. So now I also know the identity of your teacher and where you were most likely brought up, namely a certain fortress library primarily populated by thinly veiled human intellectual elitists of dubious morals.”

That… wasn’t… Actually, yes, on second thought even that last part was completely true.

“Also relevant is that Riftspeak has been actively preserved over time, having changed very little in the past ten millennia, whereas your own speech is intersped with a veritable galakkur of phrases, words and alternate pronunciations from the Shanatan dialect _anyway_. More curiously, you tend to use these elements more often and comfortably than the various Riftspeak alternatives you know, and with grammar that _is_ consistent. So while you were not _taught_ Shanatan, you had not inconsiderable _exposure_ to it, easily confirmed from how many of the Shanatan terms are colloquialisms. That and fairly inventive cusswords and declarations of vengeance as Youngest so unintentionally revealed earlier this morning, albeit notably _not_ entirely untouched by cultural and linguistic crossover unlike your so much more solid Riftspeak foundation. Recall when he enunciated that ‘an omlarandin piece of shit is still a piece of shit’ during breakfast.”

Cyrus gaped at the High Old One’s casual use of profanity and almost missed a step.

“Omlarandin is not a Dwarvish word. It is a Common word, a pidgin Tethyrian word that means ‘sparkling,’ ‘mysterious,’ or ‘magical’ depending on context. It _is_ , in fact, essentially a _mis_ pronunciation of the word ‘olaramomdin _,’_ or ‘magical peaks’ which refers to rock crystals, ‘omlars,’ found within the hills and mountains of the Omlarandin Mountains that stretch of Tethyr to Eltkazar. Youngest here also asked you – more seriously than he tried to come across, yes, little one, you really are still far off from pulling anything resembling a mardarl over me – if you had the ability to perhaps afflict his unknown aggressor with Sloshstomach. This is a term denoting a bloated, faintly nauseous condition of long-term and cumulative water retention, wherein repeated drinking of water makes the stomach increasingly distended. This condition is caused by tiny mould spores in some water sources that affect no creature native to the area as they grow up ‘used to them’, and no one who drinks boiled water or water that has been carried in leather skins or oaken barrels for long will suffer from it either. This is because the spores react with wood and hide enough to neutralize these effects, as do oils of any sort at the same occasion of consumption including those still in raw vegetables. Even among those who are not protected by any of these factors, sloshstomach occurs rarely, but we dwarves, like gnomes, are more susceptible to it than other races, and consuming certain alcoholic drinkables seems to exacerbate it. Because of this, many of the Stout Folk ‘fear’ it more than they really should, and tend to avoid drinking water whenever they can have treated water, otherwise known as _ale_ , or stronger liquor instead.”

By now Gorion had totally moved on from his earlier shock to an even starker one, and Cyrus thought he might relate.

“I have gone on something of a tangent, but it was necessary in order to provide context for two things. One, sloshstomach is not a debilitating or seriously damaging condition usually, but it does affects mood more than anything else and a dwarf who feels vaguely ill also tends to be more than vaguely irritated with the world around them. And two, the term was so thoroughly embedded in your casual vernacular that it was the first thing Youngest here thought of when he came up with his first ever sprendle. Which tells me that it is a term you heard _many_ times indeed, no doubt from your source of _exposure_ to Shanatan Dwarvish due to the dwarf in question likely suffering or having suffered from it in the past. And considering the stronger than usual propensity towards drinking alcohol that such dwarves exhibit, this was probably because he repeatedly forgot he would have told you all about it during a prior interaction on account of being perpetually inebriated. So now I have deduced that an irritable drunkard was a constant factor during you formative years, and that he was a crusty, foul-mouthed and middle-aged individual. Someone older would have known better, and someone younger would not have achieved functional drunkenness of that sort and would probably still be on whatever travels got the man exposed to non-native spores to begin with. Probably in Tethyr to Eltkazar somewhere, or even the Omlarandin Mountains themselves considering the very specific idiom Youngest employed earlier. Despite all this, the dwarf was at the very least tolerated in your home so he must have provided some sort of service. Moreover, he was not barred from interacting with you even in spite of his behaviour being egregiously inappropriate in the presence of a child, which makes it all but certain that he was or became something of a family friend as well. Either option indicates there was a shortage of alternatives for dwarven ‘kin’ you could interact with, which only adds weight to the deduction as to what type of place you hail from. A deduction that any dwarf would be able to make after hearing you speak in Dwarvish for just a goodly breath or three, instead of the entire morning as has been the case for me today.”

“So in summary, just from listening to how you speak our native tongue, any one of the Stout Folk would be able to deduce that you were born or rendered Clanless at a young age, did not grow among our people, had no Dwarven family at all in fact, and were raised by intellectual human elitists that prized erudition over common sense. The last of which is borne out by the inferred decision to allow and perhaps even facilitate recurrent interaction with a real-life embodiment of the most unfortunate widely known dwarven stereotype, despite the potential harm this could have on your development during your formative years. Now I _personally_ could go into detail about the implications this all has on the aims, means and emotional factors driving the actions of those involved in your life, and in particular your primary guardian. But since I have already gone on a tangent, I will skip to the summary this time and merely say that the juxtaposition of overthought and overindulgent decisions is an indicator of a well-intentioned individual who, despite the intellect, wisdom and love that he eventually managed to apply and turn you into the honest, intelligent and well-meaning young man you are today, was nevertheless utterly unprepared for raising you and also suffered from extreme depression for much of your childhood.”

Standing in the midst of the abject stupefaction that Gorion was radiating, Cyrus Anwar couldn’t help but stare open-mouthed, taken completely aback by this sudden unfolding of hidden character depth on his elder’s part.

As usual, he only had the truth to give in return. “That was amazing.”

“Elementary, my dear lad,” Torrin Ironstar replied with a fain quirk of his mouth. “I humbly request that you permit me to revise this aspect of your education. I do not wish to seem selfish, but to leave you so exposed would positively curl my beard.”

‘Exposed’ wasn’t a strong enough word in Cyrus opinion. “I believe an appropriate idiom here would be that no sword is ever sharp enough.”

“Correct,” Torrin Ironstar answered, and his dim, distant flame infinitesimally swelled with honest relief. Swelled and shone and remained as dim and distant as ever, but for once didn’t permanently diminish like a dying coal cannibalising itself under a sudden but brief breeze like every other time he’d indulged in an emotion before.

Cyrus looked for whatever factor made this emotional experience so different as to be benign rather than self-taxing. What he – barely – found unprecedented was a sense of entitlement.

No, not a _sense_ of entitlement, but that the emotion, the joy, was associated with an experience Torrin Ironstar was entitled _to_.

The younger dwarf couldn’t begin to grasp what was different about the experience in this situation: Cyrus’ deference? Acknowledgement? Or just Torrin Ironstar being able to act within his natural role? He couldn’t grasp the implications, and he wasn’t sure he would like what they were if he did.

Fortunately, he didn’t get to dwell on them long anyway.

“Since memory is associative and you have demonstrated a keen mind, I believe the best place to start would be with practical use of language while differentiating between the two dialects as we go,” Torrin begun his impromptu lesson as they proceeded onward. “This means we’ll be diving into everything from basic vernacular and diction to subtler aspects like phonology, etymology and situational use of speech elements, or when, why and how to use a certain word, sentence or phrase. Take the word for gold to start with: ‘ae’ is pronounced as ‘a-ey’ in Riftspeak but closer to ‘aye’ in Shanatan, making it sound like the Common word for agreement or confirmation. This can allow for a measure of discretion when talking to other Shield Dwarves in public settings. Now, if you were among Gold Dwarves, you would need to use the term ‘vellamorn’ instead. ‘Vellamorn’ was originally a silly euphemism for gold used in our rhymes and jests, derived from the name of a fictitious dwarf maiden in a ballad who wore only gowns made of linked gold coins. But in one of the few workarounds to active preservation of Riftspeak, it has _also_ become a code-word for whenever Gold Dwarves want to discuss, say, gold coins without actually saying ‘gold coins’ where others might overhear. You should never use the term when talking to Shield Dwarves, however, unless you want to look like a full-unbearded. Some _might_ recognizes its origin with Riftspeak, but in that case you will probably be taken for a goldnose, and to be branded as haughty as an elf by your fellow dwarves would be unfortunate indeed. The overwhelmingly scattered nature of Shield Dwarves since Shanatar’s fall and their intermingling with other races or cultures over the past millennia means they could just use their native tongue among strangers instead of needing a code word, so the term ‘vellamorn’ never acquired this utility. Now, contrast this with ‘Korvikoum,’ the concept defining necessary consequences of previous choices, what some human sages will know as Karma. Shield Dwarves and Gold Dwarves have naturally developed _very_ different attitudes towards this word and the concept itself, chiefly due to how overwhelmingly the former’s lives were altered or destroyed by events and actions having nothing at _all_ to do with their own choices. The latter were fortunate enough that their choices and lifestyle weren’t infringed upon by invading outsiders, let alone the utter destruction of their kingdom since the Deep Realm’s founding. But that is a topic I will go into later. For now, let’s instead look at the root words making up the term.”

“-.  .-“

It was another hour into their now _very_ enthusiastic walk through the woods that wolf son’s ears suddenly twitched and the animal abruptly stopped, sniffing the air and bringing the ongoing discussion on ‘gentle’ swears to a pause. “The person from last night is approaching.” He sniffed at the air as the two dwarves and one human also came to a stop around him. “The winds have reversed since then, I can smell them properly now. Elf. Male. Roughly two centuries old.” The wolf took a longer inhale through his nose with his eyes closed. “And… a faint but present smell of something like guril berries or oak bark… perhaps both mixed together but not quite?”

“Tannin.” Torrin Ironstar remarked. “It is likely that whoever it is wears relatively fresh leather armour.”

“If fresh means at _least_ two months old,” the wolf spoke again. “Now that I can place the scent, I remember what newly tanned leather smells like and this fragrance is _far_ weaker and lacking any hint of urine besides. And now that I am paying more attention, I detect the very faint scent of tobacco as well.”

“So the armour is likely a personal preference instead of a consequence of the iron crisis whose severity became blatant and wide in scale only this spring. And given the penchant for bow use as well as him being alone, we are looking at a hunter most likely, but one who hunts for sport instead of subsistence” Gorion murmured as he stuffed away the notebook he had been taking notes in. He’d actually studied dwarvish alongside Cyrus himself back during his childhood, since Vala had been killed before she’d managed to teach it to him properly. He had many of Cyrus’ own problems with it as a result. “Probably _not_ a druid or otherwise affiliated with the grove in this region then. Armor is made from leather worked via a process _not_ involving urine, which suggests an origin from an elf-dominant or exclusive community, a certain level of living, contacts among specific leatherworking specialists, or any combination thereof. More relevantly, tobacco is a luxury unlike regular pipeweed, one available on Faerun in rare amounts exclusively from the far away continent of Maztica and even then only via _Amn_. Either the man acquired a significant quantity since before the iron crisis soured Amn-Baldur’s Gate relations, or he has contacts in Amn that can procure him this luxury in spite of this.”

Cyrus wondered if he would grow spoiled from all the intelligent company.

“Or perhaps he is simply a well-travelled scoundrel,” Torrin said almost absently, now back hard at work knitting fine metal mail.

“Definitely a hunter if nothing else,” the wolf added as a gust of wind blew against them. “I smell wyvern venom and blood coming from his same direction, though barely.”

“So either a very competent or very foolhardy man, or perhaps both to be hunting such a beast on his own in this forest,” Torrin concluded lowly, not looking up from his work. The fabrics he was making, it turned out, were not being produced in sheets but somehow being grown into full garments without need for stitching, sewing or whatever other procedure would normally be used in garment construction.

“The smell is too faint for him to be carrying a trophy,” wolf son – Cyrus really needed to figure out a new name for him – told them. “And if it is all the same to the rest of you, if he did succeed in hunting a wyvern but somehow lost whatever prize he took from it, I do not feel in the mood to allow my head to become his consolation prize. I shall be nearby but out of sight.”

Despite the statement, the sapient animal still looked at Cyrus and waited for permission.

Cyrus gave it, so the wolf quietly bounded away into the trees even as they proceeded on their way through the ever thickening trees. Elm, beech, felsul and hiexel trees mingled together more and more as they advanced. Soon the wood would be so overgrown and trees so close together that they probably won’t have enough room to stray too far from game trails.

They finally came upon the stranger while following precisely such a trail, one most recently travelled by deer if the piles of bean-sized droppings were any indication. Cyrus had, of course, seen the elf’s soul light from far enough away that he tracked him since before the elf saw _them_ and dropped from his tree perch to approach on foot. His soul glowed with an unexpectedly optimistic fire considering the frustration, anger and resentment underscoring it. Torrin was as hard to perceive as usual so Cyrus couldn’t tell whether he saw him coming or not, which didn’t surprise Cyrus. Gorion, though, had to (expertly) mask a fair degree of surprise upon seeing the man’s emergence. Which did perplex Cyrus until he noticed the abjuration aura of the cloak the elf was wearing, a chameleon-like camouflage effect topped by non-detection enchantment. It explained why his father’s spell to see invisible entities had failed.

The cloak had averted murder for an old, crusty dwarf for many years from many potential aggressors, including the foe who finally managed to steal it. Then it facilitated the murder of said thief – a tasloi – by making it grow overconfident and wander out alone to investigate a lure set by the cloak’s current owner.

Owner who was auburn-haired, tattooed with teal butterfly wings on his face instead of the domino mask they appeared to be from a distance, and finally within speaking range.

“Ho, travelers! I am Coran, gentleman adventurer, scout light of foot and archer keen of eye! Tell me, are you anyway affiliated with those claiming this forest as their own? Or do your getup and countenance speak truly to me when they say you are not foul, barbaric savages out to steal the livelihood and lives from us free, civilized men?”

“Well met,” Cyrus said honestly. Compared to so many others, the newcomer’s history of dealing death was fairly tame, with few sentients killed and always in self-defence. Or pre-emptive self-defence. “This is High Old One Torrin.”

“Indeed? Such a high profile personage and I did not realize? My apologies good sir, and my humble greetings!”

“Greetings.”

“As gruff and aloof as I expected, but never fear! I am well known for giving the benefit of the doubt.”

More like making other people doubt various things about him, themselves and the surrounding area, usually including the faithfulness of their wives. Coran’s assailants were not always lacking motive for their violence considering the… anecdotal and _dramatic_ nuance of some of the events leading up to the various confrontations. But at the end of the day the man before him had a healthy flame that burned bright, free and Good. “This is Gorion, Sage of Candlekeep.”

“Oho! A double dose of auspicious company! I am honoured!”

“I shall inform you when I have decided if the feeling is reciprocated.”

“Good gods man, you needn’t assail me with you cutting wit so soon! I already like you!”

Correction: the elf was bright, free, Good and _fickle_. So _not_ fit to fill even a tenth of that worn out shoe Bentley Mirroshade had tossed out along with those mercenaries that cost him his guard captain friend’s life, but Cyrus wasn’t about to hold anyone up to such an unfair standard. On the other hand, since the elf had so gamely held out a hand to shake, Cyrus took it decided to also introduce himself. “And I am Cyrus Anwar, son of the Sage Gorion of Candlekeep and technical Bhaalspawn.”

Coran Otaerhyn’s handshake froze along with his smile.

Cyrus waited for his own greeting but didn’t get one. The colours behind the elf’s eyes certainly got active though. Shock always had that effect.

But instead of the flame settling on some combination of suspicion, dread, disgust or defiant determination, the elf’s inner light seemed to extinguish everything from itself except the emotional mixture Coran _consciously_ decided to feel. Surprise. Bemusement. Incredulity. “Are you serious?”

Cyrus didn’t reply.

“No, better yet, are you seriously going to lead with that?”

Cyrus again didn’t reply.

“…You must be a killer at parties.”

Cyrus still didn’t reply. He was too stunned.

The man hadn’t just decided to act on one emotion or hide it or whatever else defined that part of civility known as emotional dissimulation. No, he had consciously decided to _feel_ an emotion and his feelings shifted to match that decision perfectly. The elf had long since internalised his beliefs wholeheartedly, including a profound faith in the value of first impressions. It was why he put so much effort into ensuring he placed his best step forward. But that also meant he was true to the spirit of the _reverse_. That he valued the first impression others made on _him_ , and then his actual interactions with them, more than he valued any potential preconception or second-hand information about them no matter the implications or the source.

And so Cyrus Anwar witnessed Coran Otaerhyn not just pretending to feel only incredulity over his candid manner. No, it was literally _all_ he was feeling because the man had decided it so, and his emotional response flowed and blazed perfectly to reflect that.

This wasn’t emotional self-control, this was a perfect fusion of the mental and emotional layers of a person.

He really had been wrong before. Torrin wasn’t the opposite of Imoen. This was. Where her beliefs were defined by her feelings, Coran’s beliefs defined his feelings instead.

Cyrus Anwar suddenly recalled the full meaning and feel of _fascination_.

“Does he do this often?” Coran slowly asked the other two without taking his eyes off Cyrus after a good minute had passed without him letting go of his hand. “And by ‘this’ I mean whatever it is that he is doing which is hopefully not contemplating the best way to murder me and possibly drink my blood seeing as he’s looking at my neck-“

“I am not looking at your neck.” Cyrus snapped out of his mood and let go of the man.

“Oh yes you were,” the elf scoffed as he backed away cautiously. “You were staring at my neck! I saw that!”

“No I wasn’t,” Cyrus insisted.

“I suppose I’m obligated to take your word for it, but if it’s all the same to you I’ll do it from over here,” he took another couple of steps back and held his hands apart pacifyingly. “Just keeping a courteous distance, you understand.”

Cyrus actually rolled his eyes. “I am a Bhaalspawn, not a vampire.”

“Yes, I suppose I _have_ been alone in the wilderness for so long that my ability to tell the living and the unrestful dead apart might have suffered,” Coran most certainly pretended to be serious this time. “Why, the Chameleon knows this is why I wouldn’t mind returning to the big city! Alas, I have not quite given up on reclaiming my bounty, and there’s also the matter of an acquaintance being in mortal peril from certain _foul, barbaric savages_. Which are the topic I was building up towards before you threw off my groove!”

Cyrus felt his mouth curling into a smile despite himself. “Your ‘groove’ was hardly a darrown, you realise.”

“Alas!” Coran brought a hand to his heart. “Are we already tossing jabs at each other from across the language divide? Not as slow as the weird staring suggested, are you? Perhaps you _are_ smart enough to recognize opportunity when it comes knocking and not just because of the shared danger from _foul, barbaric savages_.” What was he _talking_ about? “The deal is this: I've been hired out by the mayor of Beregost to hunt down a great winged dragon that's been plaguing the caravan routes. He's offered 2,000 gold for its head. Now before you get cold feet, let me allay your fears. The only descriptions of the beast have always mentioned its deadly barbed tail. As you might or might not know, dragons don't have barbs on their tails, that's something unique to wyverns. Regardless, I have already hunted down and killed the fearsome beast. Something drew it out into an aerial chase around midnight two days ago and provided a perfect distraction for my trap setting. I didn’t even have to find its nest or deal with whatever friends it might have had for dinner!”

A midnight distraction. Sounded familiar. Didn’t explain why the thing spotted or attacked him in the first place, let alone left its nest at all considering wyverns were diurnal predators.

“Unfortunately, as I was making my way back and decided to make a brief stop at an acquaintance’s forest cabin, we – my acquaintance, his friend and I – were accosted by a troupe of _foul, barbaric savages_ , but I repeat myself. These so-called druids not only threatened us to leave on pain of death for the great crime of being civilized men out hunting. No, they also took my bounty away from me ‘as payment for my trespass.’ Can you imagine? You can probably see that I have not exactly complied with their ever so _polite_ request. I bet it will stick in their craw, even though I didn’t manage to get my consolation prize.” Oh dear. “Speaking of which, I don’t suppose you came across a certain beast on your way here? It would be a wolf, a particularly striking specimen almost as large as a horse. Quite atypical in behaviour as well, solitary unlike others of its kind and fairly sneaky despite its size. Assuming it is not one of those druids shapeshifted, its pelt, claws and fangs would earn enough to let me recoup the expenses I incurred for this enterprise even if I never manage to regain my rightfully earned trophy. Even split two ways or four! Come to think of it, what say you join me on what will likely be my last hunt in this forest for a while? The more the merrier I always say!”

Actually, what he ‘always’ said and which incited murderous rage in no small number of his male acquaintances was ‘that’s what she said last night.’

That being _said_.

“A large wolf was it?” Cyrus replied. “About this tall on all fours, luxuriant dark grey pelt, white belly, may or may not have what it takes to chew up and spit out a dire wolf in as little time as the latter would make mincemeat out of a poor, helpless fawn?”

“Yes, that’s right! Oh, this is splendid!”

“The wolf that was abandoned by its mother as a cub in the hopes I would be too busy ripping it to pieces to chase as she and the rest of her litter made their escape?”

“Exac- wait, what?”

“The wolf that took advantage of your distraction just now to walk up behind you?”

“EREVAN!” Coran yelped and threw himself away in an expert roll that ended with him crouching and aiming an already notched arrow at the animal in question-

Cyrus threw up a hand just a split second before the arrow flew, which was why instead of going through wolf son’s throat it bounced off a forcefield and flew spinning past Cyrus’s ear, stopping only when it collided with the truemetal cloth garment Torrin had put up as a shield.

Cyrus cleared his throat. “The wolf to whom I gave a fragment of my soul and bestowed full sentience upon just last night?”

“DON’T DO THAT!” Coran shrieked as he jumped to his feet, showing that he didn’t entirely lack shared character traits with the Good Gnome back at the Friendly Arm inn. “Didn’t anyone teach you not to surprise armed men!?”

“Actually I did,” Gorion answered with an exasperated look at the three of them. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to have helped.”

“I am sorry, Grandfather,” wolf son apologised sincerely. “I will not do it again to anyone I do not plan to do violence upon.”

“Don’t we all just _love_ caveats,” Coran griped as he put his longbow away. Then he gave the wolf a suspicious eye. “And just what kind of alpha predator are you? You’re suspiciously submissive.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” wolf son asked guilelessly. “I am a child barely eight hours old. Of _course_ I require adult guidance. Especially considering how little protection I need compared to normal babes.” He eyed the arrow. “Or perhaps not _as_ little comparative protection as I believed.”

“I would tend to agree,” Gorion said flatly before turning a hairy eyeball on the newcomer. “This shouldn’t have to be said, but I’ll do it anyway. You are _not_ allowed to hunt him.”

“Alright, alright. Don’t get your robes in a twist, we’re all civilized men here.” He then recalled who and what the group included. “Or civilized men and whatever you are I suppose.”

“I shall inform you when a term becomes representative.”

“Actually, if you’re really intelligent and self-aware, don’t you have a name?”

“I had one before yesterday,” wolf son said pensively. “It doesn’t fit anymore.”

“Oh joy!” Coran crowed, striding boldly forward to put an arm over wolf son’s neck and slouch theatrically. “I am to be witness to the true story of a boy becoming a man! A real life tale of finding one’s meaning! Truly, you could not be more fortunate now that I am here! Just give me a few days to impart to you the invaluable wisdom bestowed upon me by my prodigious life experience and you won’t need to worry about all this childlike innocence ever again! What do you say?”

“Stop touching me or I will bite you.”


End file.
